Letters

⁵ Having then given back the manuscript of Exodus, I proceeded to enlarge, so far as my time permitted, on the crime of drunkenness, and took up the writings of the Apostle Paul, and showed among what sins it is classed by him, reading the text, “If any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one (ye ought) not even to eat;” pathetically reminding them how great is our danger in eating with those who are guilty of intemperance even in their own houses.

I read also what is added, a little further on, in the same epistle: “Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” After reading these, I charged them to consider how believers could hear these words, “but you are washed,” if they still tolerated in their own hearts— that is, in God's inner temple— the abominations of such lusts as these against which the kingdom of heaven is shut.

Then I went on to that passage: “When ye come together into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper: for in eating, every one takes before other his own supper; and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What! Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in, or despise ye the church of God?” After reading which, I more especially begged them to remark that not even innocent and temperate feasts were permitted in the church: for the apostle said not, “Have ye not houses of your own in which to be drunken?”— as if it was drunkenness alone which was unlawful in the church; but, “Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?”— things lawful in themselves, but not lawful in the church, inasmuch as men have their own houses in which they may be recruited by necessary food: whereas now, by the corruption of the times and the relaxation of morals, we have been brought so low, that, no longer insisting upon sobriety in the houses of men, all that we venture to demand is, that the realm of tolerated excess be restricted to their own homes.