do themselves justice, how many amongst them might
say in particular,

Alas! how can I ever dare pretend,
From man this ancient error to remove,
Which they, ev'n to distraction, fondly love:
If I, who blame it, with such pain defend
Myself from this contagious malady,
This epidemic poison of the mind.
Weak reason, feeble thing, of which mankind
So boasts, this we can only build on thee,
Unjust continuing still, and false and vain,
In our discourses loudly we complain
Against the passions, weakness, vice, and yet
Those things we still cry down, we still commit.

One cannot, therefore, without indignation, hear Churchmen declaim
against drunkenness, while they themselves are such ruddy examples
of it.

_Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione quaerentes._[1]

With patience who can hear west-country cudden
Rail against roasted beef and good plum pudden?

If the law of prescription take place, one cannot dispute with them that
of fuddling with any colour of reason, for in St. Jerom's time, the
priests were very much given to wine. This we learn from an epistle of
that father, in which he very severely reprehends them. They have been
no changelings since. We read in the adages of Erasmus, that it was a
proverb amongst the Germans, that the lives of the monks consisted in
nothing but eating, drinking, and----Monachorum nunc nihil aliud est
quam facere, esse, bibere. Besides, a vast number of councils, who made
most severe canons against priests that should get drunk, evidently
shew, that they used frequently to do so. Such were the Councils of
Carthage, Agathon, the first of Tours, that of Worms, Treves, &c. To
make this more clear, we shall copy a little of what H. Stephens says on
this subject, in his apology for Herodotus:-- "But to return, says he,
to these proverbs, theologal wine, and the abbots, or prelates table.
I say, that without these, one could never rightly understand this
beautiful passage of Horace, viz.

"Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
Pulsanda tellus: Nunc saliaribus
Ornare pulvinar Deorum
Tempus erit dapibus sodales."[1a]

"Come, boys, lets put the flowing goblet round,
Drink hard, and with brisk measures beat the ground.
The tables of the gods now bright shall shine
With cheer luxurious, fit for mouths of priests,
When holy epicures become your guests,
And venerably quaff large cups of wine."

Nor this other,