A practical exposition of the X. Commandments with a resolution of several momentous questions…A practical exposition of the X. Commandements with a resolution of several momentous questions…

5. Consider failing here morally, which is not suitable to a man, and which even a Heathen will disallow, and failing spiritually, which is not suitable to a Christian; as when a mans eating and drinking is merely governed by sensual, or at best only by physical injunctions and customary occasions, and not by Christian directions, and is not levelled towards the great end, the glory of God, to which Christians, even in eating and drinking, are obliged by Divine precept to have a due regard.

5. Consider failing here morally, which is not sutable to a man, and which even a Heathen will disallow, and failing spiritually, which is not sutable to a Christian; as when a mans eating and drinking is meerly governed by sensual, or at best only by physical injunctions and customary occasions, and not by Christian directions, and is not levelled towards the great end, the glory of God, to which Christians, even in eating and drinking, are obliged by Divine precept to have a due regard.

6. We may consider these sins as in the act, or as in the effects; the act is excessive use of meat and drink in it self, whether evil effects follow or not; the effects are these which follow, either in distempering the man in himself, or making him fall out with others, the sin is properly in the act, (though the sinfulness of the effects be not so diminished by their following on drunkenness as many suppose) and there may be a sinful act, when there is no visible sinful effect in the mans carriage or distemper. Hence Isa. 5.22. there is a woe denounced against those who are strong to mingle or drink strong drink; the fault is not that they are strong, that is a property of nature; nor is it that they were drunken, but that being strong to bear much without being distempered, they took on more, lippening or trusting to that, and so abusing their ⟨p. 381⟩strength beyond the right end of it, and drinking more because they were strong, then they durst have done if they had been weaker.