8. Another cause of gluttony is their unacquaintedness with those rational and spiritual exercises in which the delightful fruits of abstinence do most appear. A man that is but a painful, serious student, in any noble study whatsoever, doth find a great deal of serenity and aptitude come by temperance, and a great deal of cloudy mistiness on his mind and dulness on his invention come by fulness and excess: and a man that is used to holy contemplations, meditation, reading, prayer, self-examination, or any spiritual converse above, or with his heart, doth easily find a very great difference; how abstinence helpeth, and luxury and fulness hinder him. Now these epicures have no acquaintance with any such holy or manly works, nor any mind of them, and are therefore unacquainted with the sweetness and benefit of abstinence; and having no taste or trial of its benefits, they cannot value it. They have nothing to do when they rise from eating, but a little talk about their worldly business, or compliment and talk with company which expect them, or go to their sports to empty their paunches for another meal, and quicken their appetites lest luxury should decay: as the Israelites worshipped the golden calf, (and as the heathens their god Bacchus,) Exod. xxxii. 6, "They sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play."[401] Their diet is fitted to their work; their idle or worldly lives agree with gluttony; but were they accustomed to better work, they would find a necessity of a better diet.
9. Another great cause of gluttony is, men's beastly ignorance of what is hurtful or helpful to their very health:[402] they make their appetites their rule for the quantity and quality of their food: and they think that nature teacheth them so to do, because it giveth them such an appetite, and because it is the measure to a beast: and to prove themselves beasts, they therefore take it for their measure; as if their natures were not rational, but only sensitive; or nature had not given them reason to be the superior and governor of sense. As if they knew not that God giveth the brutes an appetite more bounded, because they have not reason to bound it; and giveth them not the temptation of your delicate varieties; or giveth them a concoction answerable to their appetites; and yet giveth man to be the rational governor of those of them that are for his special service and apt to exceed: and if his swine, his horses, and his cattle were all left to their appetites, they would live but a little while.[403] If promiscuous generating be not lawful in mankind, which is lawful in brutes, why should they not confess the same of the appetite. Men have so much love of life and fear of death, that if they did but know how much their gluttony doth hasten their death, it would do more to restrain it with the most, than the fear of death eternal doth. But they judge of their digestion by their present feeling: if they feel not their stomachs sick, or disposed to vomit, or if no present pain correct them, they think they have eaten no more than doth them good. But of this more anon in the directions.
10. Another great cause of gluttony is, that it is grown the commonest custom, and being not known, is in no disgrace, unless men eat till they spew, or to some extraordinary measure. And so the measure which every man seeth another use, he thinketh is moderation, and is fit for him: whereas the ignorance of physic and matters of their own health, hath made gluttony almost as common as eating, with those that are not restrained by want or sickness. And so every man is an example of evil to another, and encourage one another in the sin. If gluttony were but in as much disgrace as whoredom, yea, or as drunkenness is, and as easily known, and as commonly taken notice of, it would contribute much to a common reformation.
III. _The Greatness of the Sin of Gluttony._
To know the greatness of the sin, is the chief part of the cure, with those that do but believe that there is a God: I shall therefore next tell you of its nature, effects, and accidents, which make it great, and therefore should make it odious to all.