3. Another cause of tippling and drunkenness is, a wicked heart, that loveth the company of wicked men, and the foolish talk, and cards, and dice, by which they are entertained. One sin enticeth down another:[434] it is a delight to prate over a pot, or rant and game, and drive away all thoughts that savour of sound reason, or the fear of God, or the care of their salvation. Many of them will say, it is not for love of the drink, but of the company, that they use the alehouse; an excuse that maketh their sin much worse, and showeth them to be exceeding wicked. To love the company of wicked men, and love to hear their lewd and idle, foolish talk, and to game and sport out your time with them, besides your tippling, this showeth a wicked, fleshly heart, much worse than if you loved the drink alone. Such company as you love best, such are your own dispositions: if you were no tipplers or drunkards, it is a certain sign of an ungodly person, to love ungodly company better than the company of wise and godly men, that may edify you in the fear of God.
4. Another cause of tippling is idleness, when they have not the constant employments of their callings to take them up. Some of them make it their chief excuse that they do it to pass away the time. Blind wretches! that are so near eternity, and can find no better uses for their time. To these I spoke before, chap. v. part i.
5. Another cause is the wicked neglect of their duties to their own families; making no conscience of loving their own relations, and teaching them the fear of God; nor following their business: and so they take no pleasure to be at home; the company of wife, and children, and servants is no delight to them, but they must go to an alehouse or tavern for more suitable company. Thus one sin bringeth on another.
6. Another cause is the ill management of matters at home with their own consciences; when they have brought themselves into so terrible and sad a case, that they dare not be much alone, nor soberly think of their own condition, nor seriously look towards another world; but fly from themselves, and seek a place to hide them from their consciences, forgetting that sin will find them out. They run to an alehouse, as Saul to his music, to drink away melancholy, and drown the noise of a guilty, self-accusing mind; and to drive away all thoughts of God, and heaven, and sin, and hell, and death, and judgment, till it be too late. As if they were resolved to be damned, and therefore resolved not to think of their misery nor the remedy. But though they dare venture upon hell itself, the sots dare not venture upon the serious thoughts of it! Either there is a hell, or there is none: if there be none, why shouldst thou be afraid to think of it? If there be a hell, (as thou wilt find it if thou hold on but a little longer,) will not the feeling be more intolerable than the thoughts of it? And is not the fore-thinking on it a necessary and cheap prevention of the feeling? Oh how much wiser a course were it to retire yourselves in secret, and there look before you to eternity, and hear what conscience hath first to say to you concerning your life past, your sin and misery, and then what God hath to say to you of the remedy. You will one day find, that this is a more necessary work, than any that you had at the alehouse, and that you had greater business with God and conscience, than with your idle companions.
7. Another cause is the custom of pledging those that drink to you, and of drinking healths, by which the laws of the devil and the alehouse do impose upon them the measures of excess, and make it their duty to disregard their duty to God: so lamentable a thing it is, to be the tractable slaves of men, and intractable rebels against God! Plutarch mentions one that being invited to a feast, made a stop when he heard that they compelled men to drink after meat, and asked whether they compelled them to eat too? apprehending that he went in danger of his belly. And it seems to be but custom that maketh it appear less ridiculous or odious to constrain men to drinking than to eating.
8. Another great cause of excess is, the devil's way of drawing them on by degrees: he doth not tempt them directly to be drunk, but to drink one cup more, and then another and another, so that the worst that he seemeth to desire of them is, but to "drink a little more." And thus, as Solomon saith of the fornicator, they yield to the flatterer, and go on as the "ox to the slaughter, and as the fool to the correction of the stocks, till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life," Prov. vii. 21-23.