By John Flavel
Argument 4. Drunkenness wastes and scatters thine estate, poverty attends excess; the drunkard shall be clothed with rags, and brought to a morsel of bread. Solomon hath read thy fortune, Prov. xxi: 17. “He that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich”; luxury and beggary are seldom far asunder. When Diogenes heard a drunkard’s house cried to be sold; “I thought (quoth he) it would not be long e’er he vomited up his house also.” “The drunkard and the glutton shall surely come to poverty,” Prov. xxiii: 21. In the Hebrew it is, he shall be disinherited or dispossessed. It doth not only dispossess a man of his reason, which is a rich and fair inheritance given to him by God, but it also dispossesses him of his estate: It wastes all that either the provident care of thy progenitors, or the blessing of God upon thine own industry, hath obtained for thee. And how will this sting like an adder, when thou shalt consider it? Apicus the Roman, hearing that there were seven hundred crowns only remaining of a fair estate that his father had left him, fell into a deep melancholy, and fearing want, hanged himself, saith Seneca. And not to mention the miseries and sorrows they bring hereby upon their families, drinking the tears, yea, the blood of their wives and children: Oh! what an account will they give to God, when the reckoning day comes! Believe it, sirs, there is not a shilling of your estates, but God will reckon with you for the expence thereof. If you have spent it upon your lusts, whilst the necessity of your families, or the poor, called upon you for it; I should be loth to have your account to make, for a thousand times more than ever you possessed. O woeful expence, that is followed with such dreadful reckonings!
Argument 5. Consider what vile and ignominious characters the Spirit of God hath put upon the subjects of this sin. The
Scripture everywhere notes them for infamous, and most abominable persons. When Eli supposed Hannah to be drunken, “Count not thine handmaid a daughter of Belial,” said she, I Sam. i: 16. Now, a son or daughter of Belial is, in scripture-language, the vilest of men or women. So Psalm lxxix: 12. “They that sit in the gate, speak against me, and I am the song of drunkards,” i.e. of the basest and vilest of men, as the opposition plainly shews; for they are opposed to them that sit in the gate, that is honourable persons. The Lord would have His people shun the society of such as a pest, not to eat with them, I Cor. v: 11. Yea, the Scripture brands them with atheism; they are such as have lost the sense and expectation of the day of judgment; mind not another world, nor do they look for the coming of the Lord, Matt. xxiv: 27, 28. He saith the Lord delayeth His coming, and then falls a-drinking with the drunkard. The thoughts of that day will make them leave their cups, or their cups will drown the thoughts of such a day. And will not all the contempt, shame and infamy which the Spirit of God hath poured on the head of this sin cause thee to abhor it? Do not all godly, yea, moral persons, abhor the drunkard? Oh! methinks the shame that attends it, should be as a fence to keep thee from it.
Argument 6. Sadly consider, there can be nothing of the sanctifying Spirit in a soul that is under the dominion of this lust; for upon the first discovery of the grace of God, the soul renounces the government of sensuality: “The grace of God that bringeth salvation, teacheth men to live soberly,” Tit. ii: 11, 12. That is one of its first effects. Drunkenness indeed may be found among heathens, that are lost in the darkness of ignorance; but it may not be once named among the children of the day. “They that be drunken, are drunken in the night; but let us that are of the day, be sober,” I Thess. v: 7, 8. And the apostles often oppose wine and the Spirit as things incompatible, Eph. v: 18. “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” So Jude xix. “Sensual, not having the Spirit.” Now what a dreadful consideration is this? “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his,” Rom. viii: 9. Sensual persons have not the Spirit of Christ, and so can be none of his. It is true, Noah, a godly man, once fell into this sin; but, as Theodoret saith, and that truly, it proceeded from want of experience of the force and power of the grape, not from intemperance; and, besides, we find not that ever he was again overtaken with that sin; but thou knowest it, and yet persistest, O wretched creature! the Spirit of Christ cannot dwell in thee. The Lord help thee to lay it to heart sadly!
Argument 7. It is a sin over which many direful woes and threats hang in the word, like so many low’ring clouds, ready to pour down vengeance upon the heads of such sinners. Look, as the condition of the saints is compassed round with promises, so is yours with threatenings, Isa. v: 11, “Woe to them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink, and continue until night, until wine inflame them.” So Isa. xxviii: 1, 2, “Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim,” etc., with many others, too long to be enumerated here. Now, consider what a fearful thing it is to be under these woes of God! Sinner, I beseech thee, do not make light of them, for they will fall heavy; assure thyself not one of them shall fall to the ground; they will all take place upon thee, except thou repent.
There are woes of men, and woes of God: God’s woes are true woes, and make their condition woful, to purpose, on whom they fall. Other woes, as one saith, do but touch the skin, but these strike the soul; other woes are but temporal, these are eternal; others do only part betwixt us and our outward comforts, these betwixt God and us for ever.
Argument 8. Drunkenness is a leading sin, which has a great retinue and attendance of other sins waiting on it; it is like a sudden landflood, which brings a great deal of dirt with it. So that like as faith excels among the graces, because it enlivens, actuates, and gives strength to them, so is this amongst sins. It is not so much a special sin against a single precept of God, as a general violation of the whole law, saith accurate Amesius. It doth not only call off the guard, but warms and quickens all other lusts, and so exposes the soul to be prostituted by them. (1) It gives occasion, yea, is the real cause of many contentions, and fatal quarrels, Prov. xxiii: 29, “Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions, babbling, wounds without cause? They that tarry long at the wine,” etc. Contentions and wounds are the ordinary effects of drunken meetings: When reason is deposed, and lust heated, what will not men attempt? (2) Scoffs and reproaches of the ways and people of God, Psal. lxxix: 12, “David was the song of the drunkards.” (3) It is the great incendiary of lust: You shall find rioting and drunkenness joined with chambering and wantonness, Rom. xiii: 13, “I will never think a drunkard to be chaste,” saith Hierom. Solomon plainly tells us what the issue will be, Prov. xxiii: 33, “Thine eyes shall behold a strange woman, and thy heart shall utter perverse things,” speaking of the drunkard. It may be called Gad, for a troop followeth it. Hence one aptly calls it, The devil’s bridle,
by which he turneth the sinner which way he pleases; he that is overcome by it, can overcome no other sin.
Argument 9. But if none of the former considerations can prevail, I hope these two last may, unless all sense and tenderness be lost. Consider, therefore, in the 9th place, that drunkards are in Scripture marked out for hell; the characters of death are upon them. You shall find them pinioned with other sons of death, I Cor. vi: 9, 10, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Oh dreadful thunderbolt! He is not asleep but dead, that is not startled at it. Lord, how are guilty sinners able to face such a text as this is! Oh soul! darest thou for a superfluous cup, adventure to drink a cup of pure unmixed wrath? O think when the wine sparkles in the glass, and gives its colour, think, I say, what a cup of trembling is in the hand of the Lord for thee. Thou wilt not now believe this. Oh! but the day is coming, when thou shalt know the price of these brutish pleasures. Oh! it will then sting like an adder. Ah! this short-lived beastly pleasure is the price for which thou sellest heaven, and rivers of pleasure that are at God’s right hand.
Objection. But I hope I shall repent, and then this text can be no bar to my salvation.
Answer. True; if God shall give thee repentance, it could not. But, in the last place, to awaken thee thoroughly, and startle thy secure conscience, which sensuality hath brawned and cauterised, let me tell thee,
Argument 10. That it is a sin out of whose power few, or none are ever rescued and reclaimed. On this account it was that Augustine called it the pit of hell. He that is addicted to this sin becomes incurable, saith a reverend divine; for seldom or never have I known a drunkard reclaimed. And its power to hold the soul in subjection to it, lies in two things especially: (1) As it becomes habitual; and habits are not easily broken. Be pleased to view an example in the case, Prov. xxiii: 35, “They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not. When shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.” (2) As it “takes away the heart,” (Hos. iv: 11, that is, the understanding, reason, and ingenuity of a man, and so makes him incapable of being reclaimed by counsel. Upon this account it was that Abigail would not speak less or more to Nabal, until the wine was gone out of him, I Sam. xxv: 36, 37. Plainly
intimating, that no wholesome counsel can get in until the wine be gone out. When one asked Cleostratus, whether he were not ashamed to be drunken, he tartly replied, “And are you not ashamed to admonish a drunkard?” Intimating that no wise man would cast away an admonition upon such an one. And it not only renders them incapable of counsel for the time, but by degrees it besots and infatuates them; which is a very grievous stroke from God upon them, making way to their eternal ruin. So then you see upon the whole what a dangerous gulf the sin of drunkenness is. I beg you, for the Lord’s sake, and by all the regard you have to your souls, bodies, and estates, beware of it. O consider these ten arguments I have here produced against it.