“If the antiquity of a custom,” writes the author of _Ebrietatis Encomium_, “makes it always good and laudable, certainly drunkenness can never deserve sufficient recommendation. Every one knows that Noah got drunk after he had planted the vine. There are some who pretend to excuse him, that he was not acquainted with the strength of wine. But to this it may very well be answered that it is not very probable so wise a man as Noah should plant a vine without knowing its nature and property. Besides it is one thing to know whether he got drunk at all: and another whether he had an intention to do so.” {8} The amount of water previously experienced by Noah should surely be sufficient to purge him of the offence of making too free with the fruit of the vine! “But,” continues the laudator of ebriety, “if we give any credit to several learned persons, Noah was not the first man who got fuddled. Father Frassen maintains ‘that people fed on flesh before the Flood, and drank wine.’ There is no likelihood, according to him, that men contented themselves with drinking water for fifteen or sixteen hundred years together. It is much more credible that they prepared a drink more nourishing and palatable. These first men of the world were endued with no less share of wit than their posterity, and consequently wanted no industry to invent everything that might contribute to make them pass their lives agreeably. Before the Flood men married, and gave their children in marriage. These people regaled each other, and made solemn entertainments. Now who can imagine that they drank at those festivals nothing but water, and fed only on fruits and herbs! Noah, therefore, was not the inventor of the use which we make of the grape; the most that he did was only to plant new vines.” Procopius of Gaza, one of the most ancient and learned interpreters of Scripture, thinks it no less true that the vine was known in the world before Noah’s time; but he does not allow that the use of wine was known before the patriarch, whom he believes to be the inventor of it. As for the wine mentioned in the New Testament, we are now assured by modern commentators—total {9} abstainers every one—that it was unfermented, devoid of alcohol, and non-intoxicating. I had certainly always looked upon the wine which Timothy was enjoined to take for his “stomach’s sake,” as some form of brandy. The Early Christians—like far too many of the late ditto—were terrible topers. Ecclesiastical history tells us that in the primitive church it was customary to appoint solemn feasts on the festivals of martyrs. This appears by the harangue of Constantine, and from the works of St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Chrysostom. Drunkenness was rife at those feasts; and this excess was looked upon as permissible. This is shewn by the pathetic complaints of St. Augustine and St. Cyprian, the former of which holy fathers thus delivered himself:—