7. How base a price dost thou set upon thy Saviour and salvation, that wilt not forbear so much as a cup of drink for them! The smallness of the thing showeth the smallness of thy love to God, and the smallness of thy regard to his word and to thy soul. Is that loving God as God, when thou lovest a cup of drink better? Art thou not ashamed of thy hypocrisy, when thou sayest thou lovest God above all, when thou lovest him not so well as thy wine and ale? Surely he that loveth him not above ale, loveth him not above all! Thy choice showeth what thou lovest best, more certainly than thy tongue doth. It is the dish that a man greedily eateth of that he loveth, and not that which he commendeth but will not meddle with. God trieth men's love to him, by their keeping his commandments.[437] It was the aggravation of the first sin, that they would not deny so small a thing as the forbidden fruit, in obedience to God! And so it is of thine, that wilt not leave a forbidden cup for him! O miserable wretch! dost thou not know that thou canst not be Christ's disciple, if thou forsake not all for him, and hate not even thy life in comparison of him, and wouldst not rather die than forsake him? Luke xiv. 26, 33. And art thou like to lay down thy life for him that wilt not leave a cup of drink for him? Canst thou burn at a stake for him, that canst not leave an alehouse, or vain company, or excess for him? What a sentence of condemnation dost thou pass upon thyself! Wilt thou sell thy God and thy soul for so small a matter as a cup of drink? Never delude thyself to say, I hope I do not so, when thou knowest that God hath told thee in his word, that "drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God," 1 Cor. vi. 10. Nay, God hath commanded those that will come to heaven, to have no familiarity with thee upon earth; "no, not so much as to eat" with thee! 1 Cor. v. 11. Read what Christ himself saith, Matt. xxiv. 48-51, "But if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and to drink with the drunken, the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Read Deut. xxix. 19, 20: If when thou "hearest the words of God's curse, thou bless thyself in thy heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst; the Lord will not spare that man, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against him, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven, and the Lord shall separate him to evil." Thou seest here how God will spice thy cups.
8. Thou art the shame of human nature:[438] thou representest man in the likeness of a beast, and worse; as if he were made but instead of a barrel or a sink: look on a drunkard filthing and spewing, and reeling and bawling, and see if he be not uglier than a brute! Thou art a shame to thy own reason, when thou showest the world, that it cannot so much as shut thy mouth, nor prevail with thee in so small a thing. Wrong not reason so much as to call thyself rational; and wrong not mankind so much as to call thyself a man: _Non homo sed amphora_, said one of Bonosus the drunken emperor when he was hanged: It is a barrel and not a man.
9. Thou destroyest that reason which is the glory of thy nature, and the natural part of the image of God upon thy mind. If thou shouldst deface the king's arms or image in any public place, and set in the stead of it the image of a dog, would it not be a traitorous contempt? how much worse is it to do thus by God! If thou didst mangle and deform thy body, it were less in this respect; for it is not thy body, but thy soul, that is made after the image of God: hath God given thee reason for such high and excellent ends and uses, and wilt thou dull it and drown it in obedience to thy throat? Thy reason is of higher value than thy house, or land, or money, and yet thou wilt not cast them away so easily! Had God made thee an idiot, or mad and lunatic, thy case had been to be pitied: but to make thyself mad, and despise thy manhood, deserveth punishment. It is the saying of Basil; Involuntary madness deserveth compassion, but voluntary madness, the sharpest whips. Prov. xix. 29, "Judgments are prepared for scorners, and stripes for the fool's back;" especially for the voluntary fool: he that will make himself a beast or a mad-man, should be used by others like a beast or a mad-man, whether he will or not.