be not oppressed with surfetting and drunkennesse: and the Apostle, to take no thought for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof, but to walke honestly, not being given to gluttony and drunkennesse, chambering, and wantonnesse: and in another place, not to be drunke with wine, wherein is excesse: for besides the losse of time and mispence of goods, the grievous diseases and pangs of the body, and dulling and besotting of the wit, which spring from intempe∣rance, many other great evils depend and wait thereon; as whoredomes, adulteries, uncleannesses, quarrels, debates, murders, with many other such like disorders and mischiefes.
Noah, that holy Patriarch, by drinking too much wine, not only disco∣vered his owne shame, but also was the occasion of that cruell curse which the Lord sent upon the posterity of Cham, which even to this day lyeth hea∣vy upon them.
Lot, though he hated the sin of Sodome, and escaped the punishment of Sodome, yet being overcome with the wine of the mountaines, he commit∣ted incest with his owne daughters, and made a new Sodome of his owne family.
Balthasar, rioting and revelling amongst his pots, had the end both of life and kingdome denounced against him, by a bodilesse hand-writing upon the wall, the Lords decree. Whilest Holofernes besotted his sences with excesse of wine and good cheare, Iudith found meanes to cut off his head.
The Emperours Septimius Severus, and Iovinianus, dyed with eating and drinking too much.
Likewise a certaine African called Donitius, overcharged his stomacke with so much food at supper, that he dyed therewith.
Gregory of Tours reporteth of Childericke a Saxon, that glutted himselfe so full of meat and drink over night, that in the morning he was found cho∣ked in his bed.
In our memory there was a Priest in Rovergne, neare Milan, that (dining with a rich farmer for his yeares dinner) cheared himselfe so well, and filled his belly so full, that it burst in two, and he dyed suddenly.
Alexander the great having invited many of his favourites and captaines to supper, propounded a crowne in reward to him that should drinke most: now the greatest drinker swallowed up foure steanes of wine, and woon the prize, being in value worth six hundred crownes; but lost his life (a jewell of greater worth) for he survived not three daies after the vile excesse: be∣sides, the rest that strove with him in this goodly conflict of carousing, one and forty of them dyed to beare him company.
The same Alexander was himselfe subject to wine, and so distempered divers times therewith, that he often slew his friends at the table in his drunkennesse, whom in sobriety he loved dearest.
Plutarch telleth us of Armitus and Ciranippus, two Syracusians, that be∣ing drunk with wine, committed incest with their owne daughters.
Cleomenes, King of Lacedemonia, being disposed to carouse after the man∣ner of the Scythians, dranke so much, that he became, and continued ever after, sencelesse.
Anacreon the Poet, a grand consumer of wine, and a notable drunkard, was choaked with the huske of a grape.
The monstrous and riotous excesses of divers Romane Emperours (as Tiberius by name, who was a companion of all drunkards) is strange to be