ese three vices,
like so many cruel monsters, leagued, as indeed they are, against
mankind, have gradually prevailed so far, as to rob civil life of
its sincerity, the soul of its piety, and the body of its health;
I have resolved to treat of the last of these vices, and prove
that it is an abuse, in order to extirpate it, if possible. As
to the second, Lutheranism, and the first, flattery, I am certain,
that some great genius or another will soon undertake the task of
exposing their deformity, and effectually suppressing them.
Therefore, I firmly hope, that, before I die, I shall see these
three abuses conquered and driven out of Italy; and this country
of course restored to its former laudable and virtuous customs.

[2] The author writes with the prejudice of a zealous Roman
Catholic against the doctrine of the Reformation, which he here
distinguishes by the name of Lutheranism. This was owing to the
artifices of the Romish clergy in those days, by whom the
reformed religion was misinterpreted, as introductive of
licentiousness and debauchery.

To come then to that abuse, of which I am proposed to speak,
namely, intemperance; I say, that it is a great pity it should have
prevailed so much, as entirely to banish sobriety. Though all are
agreed, that intemperance is the offspring of gluttony, and sober
living of abstemiousness; the former, nevertheless, is considered
a virtue and a mark of distinction, and the latter, as dishonourable
and the badge of avarice. Such mistaken notions are entirely
owing to the power of custom, established by our senses and
irregular appetites; these have blinded and besotted men to such
a degree, that, leaving the paths of virtue, they have followed
those of vice, which lead them before their time to an old age,
burthened with strange and mortal infirmities, so as to render
them quite decrepid before forty, contrary to the effects of
sobriety, which, before it was banished by this destructive
intemperance, used to keep men sound and hearty to the age of
eighty and upwards. O wretched and unhappy Italy! do you not
see, that intemperance murders every year more of your subjects,
than you could lose by the most cruel plague, or by fire and
sword in many battles? Those truly shameful feasts, no so much
in fashion, and so intolerably profuse, that no tables are large
enough to hold the dishes, which renders it necessary to heap them
one upon another; those feasts, I say, are so ma