The Directions or Helps against it

Direct. I. Mortify the flesh, according to the directions, chap. iv. part vii. Subdue its inclinations and desires; and learn to esteem and use it but as a servant. Think what a pitiful price a little gluttonous pleasure of the throat is, for a man to sell his God and his salvation for. Learn to be indifferent whether your meat be pleasing to your appetite or not; and make no great matter of it: remember still what an odious, swinish, damning sin it is, for a man’s heart to be set upon his belly. “All that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts,” Gal. v. 24.

Direct. II. Live faithfully to God, and upon spiritual, durable delights. And then you will fetch the measure of your eating and drinking from their tendency to that higher end. There is no using any inferior thing aright, till you have first well resolved of your end, and use it as a means thereto, and mark how far it is a means.

Direct. III. See all your food as provided and given you by God, and beg it and the blessing of it at his hand, and then it will much restrain you from using it against him. He is a wretch indeed that will take his food as from his father’s hand, and throw it in his face, though perhaps a petulant child would do so by a fellow-servant: he that thinketh he is most beholden to himself for his plenty, will say as the fool, Luke xii. 19, 20, “Soul, take thy ease, eat, drink, and be merry, thou hast enough laid up for many years.” But he that perceives it is the hand of God that reacheth it to him, will use it more reverently. It is a horrid aggravation of the gluttony of this age, that they play the hypocrites in it, and first (for custom) crave God’s blessing on their meat, and then sit down and sin against him with it: such are the prayers of hypocritical sensualists. But a serious discerning of God as the giver, would teach you “whether you eat or drink to do all to his glory” from whom it comes.

Direct. IV. See by faith the blood of Christ as the purchasing cause of all you have; and then sure you will bear more reverence to his blood, than to cast the fruit of it into the sink of sensuality, and to do worse than throw it upon the dunghill. What! must Christ be a sacrifice to God, and die to recover you the mercies which you had forfeited, and now will you cast them to the dogs? and please a sinful appetite with them? Did he die to purchase you provisions for your lusts, and to serve the flesh with?

Direct. V. Forget not how the first sin came into the world, even by eating the forbidden fruit. And let the slain creatures whose lives are lost for you, remember you of that sin which brought the burden on them for your sakes. And then every piece of flesh that you see, will appear to you as with this caution written upon it: O sin not as your first parents sinned by pleasing of your appetite; for this our death, and your devouring the flesh of your fellow-creatures, is the fruit of that sin, and warneth you to be temperate. Revel not to excess in your fellow-creatures’ lives.

Direct. VI. Keep an obedient, tender conscience, not scrupulously perplexing yourselves about every bit you eat, (as melancholy persons do,) but checking your appetite, and telling you of God’s commands, and teaching you to fear all sensual excess. It is a graceless, disobedient, senseless heart that maketh men so boldly obey their appetite; when the fear of God is not in their hearts, no wonder if they “feed” and “feast themselves without fear,” Jude 12. Either they make a small matter of sin in the general, or at least of this in particular: it is usually the same persons that fear not to spend their time in idleness, sports, or vanity, and to live in worldliness or fleshly lusts, who live in gluttony to feed all this. The belly is a brute, that sticks not much upon reason: where conscience is asleep and seared, reason and Scripture do little move a sensual belly-god; and any thing will serve instead of reason to prove it lawful, and to answer all that is said against it. There is no disputing the case with a man that is asleep; especially if his guts and appetite be awake: you may almost as well bring reason and Scripture to keep a swine from over-eating, or persuade a hungry dog from a bone, as to take off a glutton from the pleasing of his throat, if he be once grown blockish, and have mastered his conscience by unbelief, or stilled it with a stupifying opiate. His taste then serveth instead of reason, and against reason; then he saith, I feel it do me good; (that is, he feeleth that it pleaseth his appetite, as a swine feeleth that his meat doth him good when he is ready to burst;) and this answereth all that can be said against it. Then he can sacrifice his time and treasure to his belly, and make a jest of the abstinence and temperance of sober men, as if it were but a needless self-afflicting, or fit only for some weak and sickly persons. If the constant fear and obedience of God do not rule the soul, the appetite will be unruled; and if a tender conscience be not porter, the throat will be common for any thing that the appetite requireth. One sight of heaven or hell, to awaken their reason and sleepy consciences, would be the best remedy to convince them of the odiousness and danger of this sin.

Direct. VII. Understand well what is most conducible to your health; and let that be the ordinary measure of your diet for quantity, and quality, and time. Sure your nature itself, if you are yet men, should have nothing to say against this measure, and consequently against all the rest of the directions which suppose it: nature hath given you reason as well as appetite, and reason telleth you, that your health is more to be regarded than your appetite. I hope you will not say, that God is too strict with you, or would diet you too hardly, as long as he alloweth you (ordinarily) to choose that (when you can have it lawfully) which is most for your own health, and forbiddeth you nothing but that which hurteth you. What heathen or infidel that is not either mad or swinish, will not allow this measure and choice, as well as christians? Yea, if you believe not a life to come, methinks you should be loth to shorten this life which now you have. God would but keep you from hurting yourselves by your excess, as you would keep your children or your swine. Though he hath a further end in it, and so must you, namely, that a healthful body may be serviceable to a holy soul, in your Master’s work; yet it is the health of your bodies which is to be your nearest and immediate end and measure.

It is a very great oversight in the education of youth, that they be not taught betimes some common and necessary precepts about diet, acquainting them what tendeth to health and life, and what to sickness, pain, and death; and it were no unprofitable or unnecessary thing, if princes took a course that all their subjects might have some such common needful precepts familiarly known; (as if it were in the books that children first learn to read in, together with the precepts of their moral duty;) for it is certain, that men love not death or sickness, and that all men love their health and life; and therefore those that fear not God, would be much restrained from excess by the fear of sickness and of death: and what an advantage this would be to the commonwealth, you may easily perceive, when you consider what a mass of treasure it would save, besides the lives, and health, and strength of so many subjects. And it is certain, that most people have no considerable knowledge, what measure is best for them; but the common rule that they judge by is their appetite. They think they have eaten enough, when they have eaten as long as they have list; and not before. If they could eat more with an appetite, and not be sick after it, they never think they have been guilty of gluttony or excess.

First, therefore, you must know, that appetite is not to be your rule or measure, either for quantity, quality, or time. For, 1. It is irrational, and reason is your ruling faculty, if you are men. 2. It dependeth on the temperature of the body, and the humours and diseases of it, and not merely on the natural need of meat. A man in a dropsy is most thirsty, that hath least cause to drink: though frequently in a putrid or malignant fever, a draught of cold drink would probably be death, yet the appetite desireth it nevertheless. Stomachs that have acid humours, have commonly a strong appetite, be the digestion never so weak, and most of them could eat with an appetite above twice as much as they ought to eat. And on the contrary, some others desire not so much as is necessary to their sustenance, and must be urged to eat against their appetite. 3. Most healthful people in the world have an appetite to much more than nature can well digest, and would kill themselves if they pleased their appetites; for God never gave man his appetite to be the measure of his eating or drinking, but to make that grateful to him, which reason biddeth him take. 4. Man’s appetite is not now so sound and regular as it was before the fall; but is grown more rebellious and unruly, and diseased as the body is: and therefore it is now much more unfit to be our measure, than it was before the fall. 5. You see it even in swine, and many greedy children, that would presently kill themselves, if they had not the reason of others to rule them. 6. Poison itself may be as delightful to the appetite as food; and dangerous meats, as those that are most wholesome. So that it is most certain, that appetite is not fit to be the measure of a man. Yet this is true withal, that when reason hath nothing against it, then an appetite showeth what nature taketh to be most agreeable to itself; and reason therefore hath something for it (if it have nothing against it); because it showeth what the stomach is like best to close with and digest; and it is some help to reason to discern when it is prepared for food.

Secondly, it is certain also, that the present feeling of ease or sickness, is no certain rule to judge of your digestion, or your measure by; for though some tender, relaxed, windy stomachs, are sick or troubled when they are overcharged, or exceed their measure, yet with the most it is not so; unless they exceed to very swinishness, they are not sick upon it, nor feel any hurt at present by less excesses, but only the imperfection of concoction doth vitiate the humours, and prepare for sicknesses by degrees (as is aforesaid); and one feeleth it a month after in some diseased evacuations; and another a twelvemonth after; and another not of many years, till it have turned to some uncurable disease (for the diseases that are bred by so long preparations are ordinarily much more uncurable, than those that come but from sudden accidents and alterations, in a cleaner body). Therefore to say, I feel it do me no harm, and therefore it is no excess, is the saying of an idiot, that hath no foreseeing reason, and resisteth not an enemy while he is garrisoning, fortifying, and arming himself, but only when it comes to blows: or like him that would go into a pesthouse, and say, I feel it do me no harm; but within few days or weeks he will feel it. As if the beginning of a consumption were no hurt to them, because they feel it not! Thus living like a beast, will at last make men judge like beasts; and brutify their brains as well as their bellies.

Thirdly, it is certain also, that the
common custom and opinion is no
certain rule; nay, certainly it is an
erring rule; for judging by appetite hath brought
men ordinarily to take excess to be but temperance.
All these then are false measures.

If I should here presume to give you any rules for judging of a right measure, physicians would think I went beyond my calling, and some of them might be offended at a design that tendeth so much to their impoverishing, and those that serve the greedy worm would be more offended. Therefore I shall only give you these general intimations. 1. Nature is content with a little; but appetite is never content till it have drowned nature. 2. It is the perfection of concoction, and goodness of the nutriment, that is more conducible to health, than the quantity. 3. Nature will easilier overcome twice the quantity of some light and passable nourishment, than half so much of gross and heavy meats. (Therefore those that prescribe just twelve ounces a day, without differencing meats that so much differ, do much mistake.) 4. A healthful, strong body must have more than the weak and sickly. 5. Middle-aged persons must have more than old folks or children. 6. Hard labourers must have more than easy labourers; and these more than the idle, or students, or any that stir but little. 7. A body of close pores, that evacuateth little by sweat or transpiration, must have less, especially of moisture, than another. 8. So must a cold and phlegmatic constitution. 9. So must a stomach that corrupteth its food, and casteth it forth by periodical bilious evacuations. 10. That which troubleth the stomach in the digestion is too much, or too bad, unless with very weak, sickly persons. 11. So is that too much or bad which maketh you more dull for study, or more heavy and unfit for labour (unless some disease be the principal cause.) 12. A body that by excess is already filled with crudities, should take less than another, that nature may have time to digest and waste them. 13. Every one should labour to know the temperature of their own bodies, and what diseases they are most inclined to, and so have the judgment of their physician or some skilful person, to give them such directions as are suitable to their own particular temperature and diseases. 14. Hard labourers err more in the quality than the quantity, partly through poverty, partly through ignorance, and partly through appetite, while they refuse that which is more wholesome (as mere bread and beer) if it be less pleasing to them. 15. If I may presume to conjecture, ordinarily very hard labourers exceed in quantity about a fourth part; shopkeepers and persons of easier trades do ordinarily exceed about a third part; voluptuous gentlemen and their serving men, and other servants of theirs that have no hard labour, do usually exceed about half in half (but still I except persons that are extraordinarily temperate through weakness, or through wisdom); and the same gentlemen usually exceed in variety, costliness, curiosity, and time, much more than they do in quantity (so that they are gluttons of the first magnitude). The children of those that govern not their appetites, but let them eat and drink as much and as often as they desire it, do usually exceed above half in half, and lay the foundation of the diseases and miseries of all their lives. All this is about the truth, though the belly believe it not.

When you are once grown wise enough what in measure, and time, and quality, is fittest for your health, go not beyond that upon any importunity of appetite, or of friends; for all that is beyond that, is gluttony and sensuality, in its degree.

Direct. VIII. If you can lawfully avoid it, make not your table a snare of temptation to yourselves or others. I know a greedy appetite will make any table that hath but necessaries, a snare to itself; but do not you unnecessarily become devils, or tempters to yourselves or others. 1. For quality, study not deliciousness too much: unless for some weak, distempered stomachs, the best meat is that which leaveth behind it in the mouth, neither a troublesome loathing, nor an eager appetite after more, for the taste’s sake; but such as bread is, that leaveth the palate in an indifferent moderation. The curious inventions of new and delicious dishes, merely to please the appetite, is gluttony inviting to greater gluttony; excess in quality to invite to excess in quantity.

Object. But, you will say, I shall be thought niggardly or sordid, and reproached behind my back, if my table be so fitted to the temperate and abstinent.

Answ. This is the pleading of pride for gluttony; rather than you will be talked against by belly-gods, or ignorant, fleshly people, you will sin against God, and prepare a feast or sacrifice for Bacchus or Venus. The ancient christians were torn with beasts, because they would not cast a little frankincense into the fire on the altar of an idol; and will you feed so many idol bellies so liberally to avoid their censure? Did not I tell you, that gulosity is an irrational vice? Good and temperate persons will speak well of you for it; and do you more regard the judgment and esteem of belly-gods?

Object. But it is not only riotous, luxurious persons that I mean; I have no such at my table; but it will be the matter of obloquy even to good people, and those that are sober.

Answ. I told you some measure of gluttony is become a common sin; and many are tainted with it through custom, that otherwise are good and sober: but shall they therefore be left as uncurable? or shall they make all others as bad as they? And must we all commit that sin, which some sober people are grown to favour? You bear their censures about different opinions in religion, and other matters of difference; and why not here? The deluded quakers may be witnesses against you, that while they run into the contrary extreme, can bear the deepest censures of all the world about them. And cannot you for honest temperance and sobriety, bear the censures of some distempered or guilty persons that are of another mind; certainly in this they are no temperate persons, when they plead for excess, and the baits of sensuality and intemperance.

2. For variety also, make not your table unnecessarily a snare: have no greater variety, than the weakness of stomachs, or variety of appetites doth require. Unnecessary variety and pleasantness of meats, are the devil’s great instruments to draw men to gluttony: (and I would wish no good people to be his cooks or caterers:) when the very brutish appetite itself begins to say of one dish, I have enough, then comes another to tempt it unto more excess, and another after that to more. All this that I have said, I have the concurrent judgment of physicians in, who condemn fulness and variety, as the great enemies of health, and nurseries of diseases. And is not the concurrent judgment of physicians more valuable about matters of health, than your private opinions, or appetites? yet when sickness requireth variety, it is necessary.

3. Sit not too long at meat: for beside the sin of wasting time, it is but the way to tice down a little and a little more: and he that would be temperate, if he sat but a quarter of an hour, (which is ordinarily enough,) will exceed when he hath the temptation of half an hour (which is enough for the entertainment of strangers); much more when you must sit out an hour (which is too much of all conscience): though greedy eating is not good, yet sober feeding may satisfy nature in a little time.

4. See that your provisions be not more costly than is necessary: though I know there must be a difference allowed for persons and times, yet see that no cost be bestowed unnecessarily; and let sober reason, and not pride and gluttony, judge of the necessity: we commonly call him the rich glutton, Luke xvi. that fared sumptuously every day; it is not said that he did eat any more than other men, but that he fared sumptuously. You cannot answer it comfortably to God, to lay that out upon the belly, which might do more good another way: it is a horrid sin to spend such store of wealth unnecessarily upon the belly, as is ordinarily done. The cheapest diet (cæteris paribus) must be preferred.

Object. But the scandal of covetousness must be avoided as well as gluttony. Folks will say, that all this is done merely from a miserable, worldly mind.

Answ. 1. It is easier to bear that censure than the displeasure of God. 2. No scandal must be avoided by sin; it is a scandal taken and not given. 3. With temperate persons your excess is much more scandalous. 4. I will teach you a cure for this in the next direction.

Object. But what if I set variety and plenty on my table? May not men choose whether they will eat too much? Do you think men are swine, that know not when they have enough?

Answ. Yes, we see by certain experience, that most men know not when they have enough, and do exceed when they think they do not. There is not one of many, but is much more prone to exceed, than to come short, and abundance sin in excess, for one that sinneth by defect: and is sin so small a matter with you, that you will lay snares before men, and then say, They may take heed? So men may choose whether they will go into a whore-house, and yet the pope doth scarce deal honestly to license them at Rome; much less is it well to prepare them, and invite men to them. Will you excuse the devil for tempting Eve with the forbidden fruit, because she might choose whether she would meddle with it? What doth that on your table, which is purposely cooked to the tempting of the appetite, and is fitted to draw men to gulosity and excess, and is no way needful? “Woe to him that layeth a stumblingblock before the blind!” “Let no man put a stumblingblock in his brother’s way.” It is the wicked’s curse, “Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock.” And it was Balaam’s sin, that he taught Balak to tempt Israel, or lay a stumblingblock before them.

Direct. IX. Resolve to bestow the cost of such superfluities upon the poor, or some other charitable use; that so it become not a sacrifice to the belly. Let the greatest and needfullest uses be first served; it is no time for you to be glutting your appetites, and wallowing in excess, when any (yea, so many) about you, do want even clothes and bread. If you do thus lay out all upon the poor, which you spare from feeding your own and other men’s excess, then none can say that your sparing is through covetous niggardice; and so that reproach is taken off. The price of one feast will buy bread for a great many poor people. It is small thanks to you to give to the poor some leavings, when your bellies are first glutted with as much as the appetite desired: this costeth you nothing: a swine will leave that to another which he cannot eat. But if you will a little pinch your flesh, or deny yourselves, and live more sparingly and thriftily, that you may have the more to give to the poor, this is commendable indeed.

Direct. X. Do not over-persuade any to eat when there is no need, but rather help one another against running into excess; by seasonable discourses of the sinfulness of gluttony, and of the excellency of abstinence, and by friendly watchings over and warning one another. Satan and the flesh, and its unavoidable baits, are temptation strong enough; we need not by unhappy kindness to add more.

Direct. XI. When you feel your appetites eager, against reason and conscience, check them, and resolve that they shall not be pleased. Unresolvedness keepeth up the temptation; if you would but resolve once, you would be quiet: but when the devil findeth you yielding, or wavering, or unresolved, he will never give you rest: Prov. xxiii. 1-3, “When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee, and put a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appetite: be not desirous of his dainties, for they are deceitful meat.” The words translated, “if thou be a man given to appetite,” (agreeable to the Septuagint and the Arabic,) are translated by Montanus, and in the vulgar Latin, and the Chaldee Paraphrase, if thou have the power of thy own soul, or be master of thy soul, Compos animæ, show that thou art master of thyself by abstinence. Instead of, “put a knife to thy throat,” that is, threaten thyself into abstinence, the Syriac and divers expositors translate it, Thou dost, or, lest thou dost put a knife to thy throat, that is, Thou art as bad as cutting thy throat; or destroying thyself, when thou art gluttonously feeding thyself. Keep up resolution and the power of reason.

Direct. XII. Remember what thy body is, and what it will shortly be, and how loathsome and vile it will be in the dust. And then think how far such a body should be pampered and pleased; and at what rates. Pay not too dear for a feast for worms: look into the grave, and see what is the end of all your pleasant meats and drinks; of all your curious, costly fare. You may see there the skulls cast up, and the ugly hole of that mouth which devoured so many sweet, delicious morsels; but there is none of the pleasure of it now left. Oh wonderful folly! that men can so easily, so eagerly, so obstinately, waste their estates, and neglect their souls, and displease their God, and in effect even sell their hopes of heaven, for so small and sordid a delight, as the pleasing of such a piece of flesh, that must shortly have so vile an end! Was it worth so much care, and toil, and cost, and the casting away of your salvation, to pamper that body a little while that must shortly be such a loathsome carcass? Methinks one sight of a skull or a grave, should make you think gluttony and luxury madness. Eccles. vii. 2, “It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to heart.” David saith of the wicked, “Let me not eat of their dainties;” but, “let the righteous smite me and reprove me,” Psal. cxli. 4, 5. So dangerous a thing is feasting even among friends, where of itself it is lawful, that Job thought it a season for his fears and sacrifice; Job i. 4, 5, “And his sons went and feasted in their houses every one his day, and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them.” But Job sacrificed for them, saying, “It may be my sons have sinned, and cursed” (that is, thought provokingly, unreverently, unholily, or contemptuously of) “God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.” A funeral is a safer place for you than a feast.

Direct. XIII. Go into the houses of the poor sometimes, and see what provision they live upon, and what time they spend at meat; and then bethink you, whether their diet or yours do tend more to the mortification of fleshly lusts? and whether theirs will not be as sweet as yours at the last? and whether mere riches should make so great a difference in eating and drinking between them and you? I know that where they want what is necessary to their health, it is lawful for you to exceed them, and be thankful; but not so as to forget their wants, nor so as to turn your plenty to excess. The very sight now and then of a poor man’s diet and manner of life would do you good: seeing affecteth more than hearsay.

Direct. XIV. Look upon the ancient christians, the patterns of abstinence, and think whether their lives were like to yours. They were much in fastings and abstinence, and strangers to gluttony and excess; they were so prone to excess of abstinence, rather than excess of meat, that abundance of them lived in wildernesses or cells, upon roots, or upon bread and water: (from the imitation of whom, in a formal, hypocritical manner, came the swarms of friars that are now in the world:) and will you commend their holiness and abstinence, and yet be so far from any serious imitation of them, that you will, in gluttony and excess, oppose yourselves directly against them?

I have now detected the odiousness of this sin, and told you if you are willing how you may best avoid it: if all this will not serve, but there be “any profane person among you like Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright,” Heb. xii. 16, who for the pleasing of his throat will sell his soul, let him know that God hath another kind of cure for such: he may cast thee into poverty, where thou shalt be a glutton only in desire, but not have to satisfy thy desire; he may shortly cast thee into those diseases, which shall make thee loathe thy pleasant fare, and wish thou hadst the poor man’s fare and appetite; and make thee say of all the baits of thy sensuality, “I have no pleasure in them,” Eccles. xii. 1. The case will be altered with thee when all thy wealth, and friends, and greatness cannot keep thy pampered carcass from corruption, nor procure thy soul a comfort equal to a drop of water to cool thy tongue, tormented in the flames of God’s displeasure: then all the comfort thou canst procure from God and conscience will be but this sad memento, “Remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted and thou art tormented,” Luke xvi. 25. James v. 1, 5, “Go to now, ye rich men; weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you — Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter: ye have condemned and killed the just,” &c.

Yet after all this, I shall remember you that you run not into the contrary extreme: place not more religion in external abstinence and fastings than you ought: know your own condition, and how far either fasting or eating is really a help or a hinderance to you in those greater things which are their ends, and so far use them. A decaying body must be carefully supported: an unruly body must be carefully subdued: the same medicines serve not for contrary tempers and diseases: to think, that abstaining from flesh, and glutting yourselves with fish and other meats, is acceptable to God; or that mere abstaining so many hours in a week, and serving your appetite on the rest, is meritorious; or that abstinence from meat will prove you holy, without an abstinence from sin, all this is self-deluding error. Nor must you raise a great many of perplexing scruples about all that you eat or drink, to no edification, but merely to your vexation; but in cheerful temperance preserve your health, and subdue concupiscence.