earing, causing his eyes to be put out with a burning hot iron.
He that is given to please his senses, and delighteth in the excesse
of eating and drinking, may, as Sallust saith, bee called animal, for
hee is unworthy the name of a man. For wherin can a man more resemble
brute beasts, and degenerate from his angelicall nature, than to serve
his belly and his senses? But if our predecessors exceeded us in
superfluitie of meats, wee can compare and goe beyond them in drinking
and quaffing.

King Edgar so much detested this vice of drunkennesse, that hee set an
order that no man should drinke beyond a certaine ring, made round
about the glasses and cups, of purpose for a marke.

Anacharsis saith, that the first draught is to quench the thirst, the
second for nourishment, the third for pleasure, the fourth for
madnesse.

Augustine Lercheimer reporteth a strange historie of three quaffers in
Germany, in the yeare one thousand five hundred and fortie nine; these
three companions were in such a jollity after they had taken in their
cups, according to the brutish manner of that countrey, that with a
coale they painted the divell on the wall, and dranke freely to him,
and talked to him as though hee had been present. The next morning
they were found strangled, and dead, and were buried under the
gallowes.

Surfeits maketh worke many times for the physician, who turning R into
D giveth his patient sometime a Decipe for a Recipe; and so payeth
deerely for his travell that hastneth him to his end. Horace calleth
such men that give themselves to their belly, a beast of Arcadia that
devoureth the grasse of the earth.

Cornelius Celsus giveth this counsell when men come to meat: _Nunquam
utilis nimia satietatis, saepe inutilis nimia abstinentia_; over-much
satiety is never good, over-much abstinence is often hurtfull.

Mahomet desirous to draw men to the liking of him and his doctrine,
and perceiving the pronenesse of men to luxuriousness and fleshly
pleasures, yet dealt more craftily in his _Alcoran_, than to persuade
them that felicitie consisted in the voluptuousenesse and pleasures of
this life, which he knew would not be believed nor followed but of a
few, and those the more brutish sort, but threatened them with a kind
of hell, and gave them precepts tending somewhat more to civilitie and
humanitie, and promised his followers a paradise in the life to come,
wherin they should enjoy all maner of pleasures which men desire