Chapter VI.
That the mind is not intoxicated by wine alone.
The
belly when filled
with all kinds of food gives birth to seeds of wantonness, nor can the
mind, when choked with the weight of food, keep the guidance and
government of the thoughts. For not only is drunkenness with wine wont
to intoxicate the mind, but excess of all kinds of food makes it weak
and uncertain, and robs it of all its power of pure and clear
contemplation. The cause of the overthrow and wantonness of Sodom was
not drunkenness through wine, but fulness of bread. Hear the Lord
rebuking Jerusalem through the prophet. “For how did thy sister
Sodom sin, except in that she ate her bread in fulness and
abundance?”
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And because
through fulness of bread they were inflamed with uncontrollable lust of
the flesh, they were burnt up by the judgment of God with fire and
brimstone from heaven. But if excess of bread alone
drove them to such a headlong downfall into sin
through the vice of satiety, what shall we think of those who with a
vigorous body dare to partake of meat and wine with unbounded licence,
taking not just what their bodily frailty demands, but what the eager
desire of the mind suggests.
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Ezek. xvi. 49
.