Is one that will be a man to-morrow morning, but is now what you will
make him, for he is in the power of the next man, and if a friend the
better. One that hath let go himself from the hold and stay of reason,
and lies open to the mercy of all temptations. No lust but finds him
disarmed and fenceless, and with the least assault enters. If any
mischief escape him, it was not his fault, for he was laid as fair for
it as he could. Every man sees him, as Cham saw his father the first of
this sin, an uncovered man, and though his garment be on, uncovered; the
secretest parts of his soul lying in the nakedest manner visible: all
his passions come out now, all his vanities, and those shamefuller
humours which discretion clothes. His body becomes at last like a miry
way, where the spirits are beclogged and cannot pass: all his members
are out of office, and his heels do but trip up one another. He is a
blind man with eyes, and a cripple with legs on. All the use he has of
this vessel himself, is to hold thus much; for his drinking is but a
scooping in of so many quarts, which are filled out into his body, and
that filled out again into the room, which is commonly as drunk as he.
Tobacco serves to air him after a washing, and is his only breath and
breathing while. He is the greatest enemy to himself, and the next to
his friend, and then most in the act of his kindness, for his kindness
is but trying a mastery, who shall sink down first: and men come from
him as a battle, wounded and bound up. Nothing takes a man off more from
his credit, and business, and makes him more recklessly careless what
becomes of all. Indeed he dares not enter on a serious thought, or if he
do, it is such melancholy that it sends him to be drunk again.