Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 2.djvu/404

392 of man in the mouth will not fill his soul." The daughter of gluttony is drunkenness; for that vice is the author of luxury—the worst of all plagues. What is there fouler than this? What more hurtful? What sooner wears away virtue? Glory laid asleep is converted to madness; and the strength of the mind, equally with the strength of the body, is destroyed. Basilius says, "When we serve the belly and throat, we are cattle; and study to resemble brutes which are prone to this, and made by nature to look upon the earth and obey the belly." (123) Boethius also, "De Consolatione, 51, iv." "He who forsakes virtue ceases to be a man; and since he cannot pass to the divine nature it remains that he must become a brute." And our Lord, in the Gospel, "Take heed lest your hearts be hardened with surfeiting and drunkenness." Oh how great had been the counsels of wisdom, if the heats of wine and greediness interposed not. Dangerous is it when the father of a family, or the governor of a state, is warm with wine, and inflamed with anger. Discretion is dimmed, luxury is excited, and lust, mixing