mend their
ways, until they reform from their evil habits. Concerning them Paul
says plainly (Gal 5, 19-21): "Now the works of the flesh are manifest,
which are these: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry,
sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions,
parties, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of which I
forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that they who practice such
things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."

Here you see that he who lies day and night in drunkenness has no more
inheritance in the kingdom of God than the whoremonger, adulterer, and
such like. Know then, just as idolatry, adultery and so on, are sins
excluding you from heaven, so too, drunkenness is a sin which bars you
from the blessings of baptism, and from remission of sins, faith in
Christ and your personal salvation. Hence, if you would be a Christian
and saved, you must be careful to lead a sober and temperate life. But
if you disregard this admonition and yet hope to be saved--well, then
continue to be an infidel and a brute so long as God permits.

17. Were you a Christian, even if you could permit yourself to be
unmoved by the physical injury wherein, by drunkenness, you plunge
yourself, not only wasting your money and property, but injuring your
health and shortening your life; and if you could permit yourself to
be unmoved by the stigma justly recognized by men and angels as
attaching to you, a filthy sot--even then you ought to be moved by
God's command, by the peril of incurring eternal damnation--of losing
God's grace and eternal salvation--to refrain from such unchristian
conduct. O God, how shameless and ungrateful we are, we so highly
blessed of God in having his Word and in being liberated from the
tyranny of the Pope, who desired our sweat and blood and tortured our
consciences with his laws--how ungrateful we are in the face of these
things not to amend our lives in some measure in honor to the Gospel,
and in praise and gratitude to God!

18. Where peradventure there are still pious parents or godfearing
Christian rulers, they ought, for the sake of lessening the evil of
intemperance, to restrain their children and domestics with serious
chastisements. Pastors and preachers are under obligation to admonish
the people frequently and faithfully, holding up to them God's
displeasure and wrath and the injuries to soul, body and property
resultant from this evil, to the inten