Part 564

1. Luxury and gluttony is a sin exceeding contrary to the love of God: it is idolatry: it hath the heart, which God should have; and therefore gluttons are commonly and well called belly-gods, and god-bellies, because that love, that care, that delight, that service and diligence which God should have, is given by the glutton to his belly and his throat.[404] He loveth the pleasing of his appetite better than the pleasing of God; his dishes are more delightful to him than any holy exercise is; his thoughts are more frequent and more sweet of his belly than of God or godliness; his care and labour are more that he may be pleased in meats and drinks, than that he may secure his salvation, and be justified and sanctified. And, indeed, the Scripture giveth them this name, Phil. iii. 19, "Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, who glory in their shame, who mind earthly things," being enemies to the cross of Christ, that is, to bearing the cross for Christ, and to the crucifying of the flesh, and to the mortifying, suffering parts of religion. Nay, such a devouring idol is the belly, that it swalloweth up more by intemperance and excess than all other idols in the world do. And remember that the very life of the sin is in the appetite and heart: when a man's heart is set upon his belly, though he fare never so hardly through necessity, he is a glutton in heart. When you make a great matter of it, what you shall eat and drink as to the delight, and when you take it for a great loss or suffering if you fare hardly, and are troubled at it, and your thoughts and talk are of your belly, and you have not that indifferency whether your fare be coarse or pleasant, (so it be wholesome,) as all temperate persons have, this is the heart of gluttony, and is the heart's forsaking of God, and making the appetite its god.