The practical divinity of the papists discovered to be destructive of Christianity and mens…

Sect. 20. Intemperance, which they call Gula, comprising both Gluttony and Drunkenness, may well pass for a Cardinal crime, yet both together, by an after reckoning, make but a poor Venial^(r). They define it an inordinate appetite of eating and drinking, (viz.) to excess, not for necessity but for pleasure. This when it is excessive every way in the charge, the time, the quality, the pleasure, the quantity, ^(s)is not in its own nature a mortal sin, according to the doctrine of Aquinas, though it be a Capital Vice, and the cause of many other. But then it may be deadly by accident, ^(t)if it be grievously hurtful to the body. So it becomes those to determine, who are more tender of the concerns of the body than of the soul. Yet that we may understand how the pleasure of sensuality may be preferred before either soul or body, they tell us, that if the damage done to the body by intemperance, be not grievous, ^(u)or if it prove so great, yet if the Glutton do not observe it; or if the great prejudice done to his health be not so frequent, that he is bound to observe it, it will be Venial still. But Cajetan troubles us not with this respect to health, but concludes ⟨p. 294⟩^(x)it may be Venial (and of a large size sometimes), not only when it brings upon us other inconveniences, but other sins; and particularly when it is prejudicial to health. He has but one case wherein it will be more than Venial; ^(y)then only is it mortal, says he, when this pleasure in eating is a mans chief end, and his belly his God; that is, when for the pleasure of it, he (not only transgresses all rules of temperance, but) has no regard of any command of God, or the Church; as if a man will Steal to play the Glutton, &c. It seems this sensual Lust will never be criminal, unless one be so much at its devotion, ^(z)