Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford, page 39 by Edward Berens
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race of God. And destitute of the controlling guidance, both of reason and of Divine Grace, what is there left to prevent his ungoverned passions from carrying him into the most perilous excesses? There are deadly vices, to which young men are, at all times, but too powerfully solicited by their natural appetites; and when those appetites are stimulated by drinking, and all salutary control shaken off, the danger is great indeed. You perhaps may remember an Eastern apologue to the following effect, (I know not where to find it): The Devil having, by the impulse of terror, induced a holy man to consent to commit some crime, allowed him to choose, whether he would get drunk, or be guilty of either of two of the most horrible enormities he could conceive. The poor victim chose drunkenness, as being the least offence, but in the state to which he had thus brought himself, was guilty of all three.
And even if you are kept back from any additional guilt, yet you well know, that by throwing away your reason, you become capable of being guilty of all sorts of absurdities,--that you are liable to say and do a hundred foolish things, of which, when you return to your senses, you will be heartily ashamed,--that you expose yourself to the ridicule and contempt of those, who witness the degraded state to which you have reduced yourself.
A drunken Christian is almost a contradiction in terms; and something the same may be said of a drunken gentleman. Among many in the middle and the industrious classes of society, there is much intelligence, much quick perception of what is morally right, and of general propriety of behaviour. As such men are not backward in shewing respect, where respect is really due, so they are keen-sighted in detecting gross inconsistencies of conduct, and ready to bestow the full measure of contempt upon those, who, while placed above them by the advantages of birth, and fortune, and education, yet meanly condescend, by their vices and their excesses, to degrade t