Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/285

ICHTHYOPHAGIA; OR, FISH-EATING. 281 to and fro, like a ship tossed by the waves, being without a rudder; others were supporting one so drunk he could not go, and hardly able to stand themselves; others fell down, and could scarce get up again; some were crowned with leaves of oak. Fi. Vine-Leaves and Wands would have befitted them better. Bu. The senior of them, acting the part of Silenus, was carried like a pack upon mens shoulders, after the manner they carry a dead corps, with his feet foremost, but with his face downwards, lest he should be chok’d with his own vomit, vomiting plentifully down the heels of those that carried hindmost; and as to the bearers, there was not a sober man amongst ’em; they went along laughing, but after such a manner, that you might perceive they had lost their senses. In short, they were all mad; and in this pickle they made a cavalcade into the city in the day-time. Fi. How came they to be all so mad? Bu. You must know, in the next town, there was wine sold something cheaper than in the city, so a parcel of boon companions went thither, that they might attain the greater degree of madness for the lesser sum of money; but though, indeed, they did spend the less money, they got the more madness. If these men had but tasted an egg, they would have been hauled to prison as if they had committed paricide; when, besides their neglecting divine service, and evening prayers upon so sacred a day, so much intemperance was not only committed with impunity, but no body seem’d to be so much as displeas’d at it.

Fi. But that you may not wonder so much at that, in the midst of the cities, and in alehouses next to the churches, upon the most solemn holidays, there was drinking, singing, dancing, fighting, with such a noise and tumult, that divine service could not be performed, nor one word heard that the parson said. But if the same men had set a stitch in a shoe, or eat pork on a friday, they would have been severely handled; tho’ the lord’s day was instituted chiefly for this end, that they might be at leisure to attend to the doctrine of the gospel; and therefore it was forbid to mend shoes, that they might have leisure to trim their souls. But is not this a strange perverting of judgment? Bu. A prodigious one.

Fi. Whereas there are two things in the ordering a fast, the one abstinence from meat, and the other the choice of it; there is scarce any body ignorant, that the first is either a divine command, or very near it; but the other not only human, but also in a manner opposite to the apostles real doctrine; however we excuse it, nevertheless by a preposterous judgment in common, it is no crime to eat a supper, but to taste a bit of meat that is forbidden by man, but permitted by god, and also by the apostles, this is a capital crime. Fasts, tho’ it is not certain they were commanded by the apostles, yet they are recommended in their examples and epistles. But the forbidding the eating of meats, that god has made to be eaten with thanksgiving, if we were to defend that before st. Paul, as a judge, to what shifts should we be driven? And yet, almost all the world over, men eat plentifully, and no body is offended at it; but if a sick man taste a bit of a chicken, the whole christian religion is in danger. In england the common people have a supper every other day, in lent time, and no body wonders at it; but if a man, at death’s door in a fever, should sup a little chicken broth, it is accounted a crime worse than sacrilege.