in
this world; as faire gardens environed with pleasant rivers, sweet
flowers, all kinde of odoriferous savours, most delicate fruits,
tables furnished with most daintie meats, and pleasant wines served in
vessels of gold, &c. &c.

The Egyptians had a custome not unmeet to bee used at the carousing
banquets; their manner was, in the middest of their feasts to have
brought before them anatomie of a dead body dried, that the sight and
horror thereof putting them in minde to what passe themselves should
one day come, might containe them in modesty. But peradventure things
are fallen so far from their right course, that that device will not
so well serve the turne, as if the carousers of these later daies were
persuaded, as Mahomet persuaded his followers when hee forbad them the
drinking of wine, that in every grape there dwelt a divell. But whun
they have taken in their cups, it seemeth that many of them doe feare
neither the divell nor any thing else.

Lavater reporteth a historie of a parish priest in Germanie, that
disguised himselfe with a white sheete about him, and at midnight came
into the chamber of a rich woman that was in bed, and fashioning
himself like a spirit, hee thought to put her in such feare, that shee
would procure a conjuror or exorcist to talke with him, or else speake
to him herselfe. The woman desired one of her kinsmen to stay with her
in her chamber the next night. This man making no question whether it
were a spirit or not, instead of conjuration or exorcisme, brought a
good cudgell with him, and after hee had well drunke to encrease his
courage, knowing his hardinesse at those times to bee such, that all
the divels in hell could not make him affraide, hee lay downe upon a
pallat, and fell asleepe. The spirit came into the chamber againe at
his accustomed houre, and made such a rumbling noyse, that the
exorcist (the wine not being yet gone out of his head) awaked, and
leapt out of his bed, and toward the spirit hee goeth, who with
counterfeit words and gesture, thought to make him afraid. But this
drunken fellow making no account of his threatnings, Art thou the
divel? quoth he, then I am his damme; and so layeth upon him with his
cudgell, that if the poore priest had not changed his divel's voyce,
and confessed himselfe to be Hauns, and rescued by the woman that then
knew him, he had bin like not to have gone out of the place alive.

This vice of drunkennesse, wherein many take over-great p