Page:Sermon on malt.pdf/8

 my use of ardent spirits as a common beverage contribute to bring them out of their province as a medicine, and place them in a situation which they cannot occupy with safety ? will my example give a sanction to a merely useless luxury which neither does me nor any man in health good, and which spreads over the face of my country wretchedness and ruin that mock all calculation ? Distilled spirits are in their own nature and character tempting ; they lead onward to excess : the moderate use of them is, in its own nature, calculated to produce the drunken appetite. While in the continued use of ardent spirits I could not conscientiously pray “ Lead us not into temptation." The state of the body and mind which constitutes drunkenness is formed by what has been falsely called “ the moderate use of ardent spirits."

Distilled spirits are in their own nature and character injurious to the healthy human frame: they possess similar properties and produce similar effects with henbane, deadly nightshade, laudanum, and other substances, which all allow to be poisonous ; and they should therefore be removed by all men in health as noxious. These statements of the properties of distilled spirits are not mine, for I have no right to prononuce a judgement upon the subject: they are the unanimous judgement of medical authorities, whose names do honour both to the old and new world. Now if there are men of information and character who know this judgement to be