A brief exposition on the XII. smal prophets: the first volume containing an exposition on the prophecies of Hosea, Joel, & Amos. By George Hutcheson, minister at Edenburgh.

Ver. 5. In the day of our king the princes have made him sick with bottels of wine, he stretched out his hand with scorners.

The fifth accusation is for Court-intemperance, in King, Prin∣ces and Courtiers, without any respect to honesty or shame. In so much that on the Kings birth-day, or the day of his Corona∣tion, or some other solemnity, yearly observed by him, the Prin∣ces did draw the King to be drunk; whereby, 1. He contracted sicknesse. 2. It made him forget and prostitute his place and authority, joyning in society with scorners, or men eminently dissolute, and look rather like such in his drunkennesse, then like a King. Doct, 1. Dayes which men will have observed as dayes of festivity and solemnity, do ordinarily prove dayes of great miscarriage and provocation against God: For, it is in the day of our King, that they contract very eminent guilt; In the Original it is, the day of our Kings, wherein the Lord by his Prophet repeats their words, as proclaiming and boasting of it, and therefore loosing the rains to intemperance. See Exod. 32.6. Job. 1.5. Eccles. 7.2, 3. 2. Drunkennesse and sensuality is an hainous crying sin, and particularly in Rulers; For, it is a sad challenge, that they should be given to bottels of wine. See Prov. 31.4. Eccles. 10.16, 17. Isa. 28.1. 3. Nobles and Prin∣ces, and great Courtiers, are ordinarily great plagues and snares

to Kings, who having their ear and countenance, do make use of it for no other end, but to draw them to sin against God; For, it is the Princes who have made him sick, &c. 4. It is the height of sensuality, when men not only become brutish themselves, but dare invite and tempt others to the same excesse of riot, and by all meanes draw them to drunkennesse: For, it is the sin of the Princes, that they draw the King to drink. See Hab. 2.15, 16. Est. 1.8. 5. Men by their intemperance, do not only draw on the guilt of misspending time, and abusing the good creatures of God; but of self-murther, and abusing their own bodies also: For, they make him sick with bottles of wine, either by making him drink whole bottles, or drinke wine, which in these parts they kept and carried in bottels. 6. Dayes of feasting and in∣temperance, do also ordinarily prove dayes of great insolence and boldnesse in all other sins: When mens hearts are up with carnal pleasures and joy, and benummed with sensuality, they care not what they do, they stand in aw of none, and they will scorne all that contradict them, or are not of their minde and way; For, it is imported here, there are scorners in the day of their King, that is, either mockers of all such as applaud not their way, as, Psal. 35.16. or such as are come to an height of impiety, to scorne and defie God and his threatenings, and therefore are called the scornful, Psal. 1.1. 7. It is also the great sin of drunkards, that by their sensuality, they deprive themselves of the use of reason, and render themselves contemptible and like beasts, that they can neither know their place nor dutie; For, the King in his drunk∣ennesse stretched out his hand with scorners, that is, debased himself to keep society with such lewd persons, and looked liker one of these then a King. 8 It is the sin of Kings and Rulers, or any in lawful power, to prostitute that authority wherewith God hath stamped them in their office, and to render it contemptible by their own miscarriage, by countenancing insolent sinners, whom they should suppresse; and by conversing with base and vile persons, and joyning with them in base courses unbeseeming their station and dignitie; For, herein did their King sin, in stretching out his hand with scorners.