ALE-HOUSES ARE HELL-HOUSES!

The Green Dragon Tavern, Boston

And, Oh! that the drinking-houses in the town might once come under a laudable regulation. The town has enormous number of them; will the haunters of those houses hear the counsels of Heaven? For you that are the town-dwellers, to be oft or long in your visits of the ordinary, 'twill certainly expose you to mischiefs more than ordinary. I have seen certain taverns, where the pictures of horrible devourers were hanged out for the signs; and, thought I, 'twere well if such signs were not sometimes too significant: alas, men have their estates devoured, their names devoured, their hours devoured, and their very souls devoured, when they are so besotted that they are not in their element, except they be tipling at such houses. When once a man is bewitched with the ordinary, what usually becomes of him? He is a gone man; and when he comes to die, he will cry out, as many have done, "Ale-houses are hell-houses! ale-houses are hell-houses!" But let the owners of those houses also now hear our counsels. "Oh! hearken to me, that God may hearken to you another day!" It is an honest, and a lawful, though it may not be a very desirable employment, that you have undertaken: you may glorifie the Lord Jesus Christ in your employment if you will, and benefit the town considerably. There was a very godly man that was an innkeeper, and a great minister of God could say to that man, in 3 John 2, "Thy soul prospereth." O let it not be said of you, since you are fallen into this employment, "Thy soul withereth!" It is thus with too many: especially, when they that get a license perhaps to sell drink out of doors, do stretch their license to well within doors. Those private houses, when once a professor of the gospel comes to steal a living out of them, it commonly precipitates them into an abundance of wretchedness and confusion. But I pray God assist you that keep ordinaries, to keep the commandments of God in them. There was an Inn at Bethlehem where the Lord JESUS CHRIST was to be met withal. Can Boston boast of many such? Alas, too ordinarily it may be said, "there is no room for him in the Inn!" My friends, let me beg it of you, banish the unfruitful works of darkness from your houses, and then the sun of righteousness will shine upon them. Don't countenance drunkenness, revelling, and mis-spending of precious time in your houses; let none have the snares of death laid for them in your houses. You'll say, "I shall starve then!" I say, "Better starve than sin:" but you shall not. It is the word of the Most High, "Trust in the Lord, and do good, and verily thou shalt be fed." And is not peace of conscience, with a little, better than those riches that will shortly melt away, and then run like scalding metal down the very bowels of thy soul?

What shall I say more?

Cotton Mather, going on a rant, in Magnalia Christi Americana.