1. But if these customs, &c. were but indifferent, yet being abused they deserve to be rejected.--2. The abuse is acknowledged by those that use them, therefore should leave them.--3. Such as pretend to seriousness should exemplarily withdraw from such latitudes: a wise parent weans his child of what it dotes too much upon; and we should watch over ourselves and neighbours.--4. God, in the case of the brazen serpent, &c. gives us an example to put away the use of abused things.--5. If these things were sometimes convenient, yet when their use is prejudicial in example, they should be disused.--6. Such as yet proceed to love their unlawful pleasures more than Christ and his cross; the mischief they have brought to persons and estates, bodies and souls.--7. Ingenuous people know this to be true: an appeal to God's witness in the guilty: their state, that of Babylon.--8. But temperance in food, and plainness in apparel, and sober conversation conduce most to good: so the apostle teaches in his epistles.--9. Temperance enriches a land: it is a political good, as well as a religious one, in all governments.--10. When people have done their duty to God, it will be time enough to think of pleasing themselves.--11. An address to the magistrates and all people, how to convert their time and money to better purposes.
I. But should these things be as indifferent, as they are proved perniciously unlawful; for I never heard any advance their plea beyond the bounds of mere indifferency; yet so great is their abuse, so universal the sad effects thereof, like to an infection, that they therefore ought to be rejected of all; especially those whose sobriety hath preserved theta on this side of that excess, or whose judgments, though themselves be guilty, suggest the folly of such intemperance. For what is an indifferent thing, but that which may be done, or left undone? Granting, I say, this were the case, yet do both reason and religion teach that when they are used with such an excess of appetite as to leave them would be a cross to their desires, they have exceeded the bounds of mere indifferency, and are thereby rendered no less than necessary. Which being a violation of the very nature of the things themselves, a perfect abuse enters; and consequently they are no longer to be considered in the rank of things simply indifferent, but unlawful.