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Excesses which I have touch'd at in the former Part of this Work to their true Original, we should find much of it owing to the Extravagances of our Living in England; I mean, as to eating and drinking. What is the Reason we have so many People die of Fevers here more than in any other Part of the World? and that, every Year or two, we have what we call a new Distemper, which carries off so many, that at those Seasons the Weekly Bills in London rise up to six hundred or seven hundred a Week? Why is the Small-Pox so fatal, and particularly among the Gentry and Persons of Distinction, but because of the Excesses of eating and drinking, in which, as well as in the Nature of what we eat and drink, we go beyond the rest of Mankind?
The same Reason is to be given for other Things, the same Excesses ferment the Blood, raise the Spirits, and produce all the immoderate scandalous Things which I have been complaining of, and which there is so much Reason to complain of among us; in which the Turks and Savages appear to act more like Men of Reason than we do.
Their Way of Living is not so high; their Blood does not boil with the same intemperate Heats, consequently their Abstinence is not so much a Virtue, but I must add too, that our Incontinence is the more a Vice; 'tis a Crime occasioned by a Crime; and we ought to use Temperance first in our Diet, and then we shall, with the more ease, practice Temperance in other Things.
The Crime of Sodom, however unnatural the Vices are which they practised, is laid all upon a Cause, which was of the same Kind withours,
