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.

COTTON MATHER

Cotton Mather's Encounter With Tibuta in the Salem Woods

In the previous post, we cited Cotton Mather's eminent work, Magnalia Christi Americana, in English usually given as The Ecclesiastical History of New England. It may be interesting too, to get a glimpse of what the man himself, who has been called the "keeper of the Puritan conscience", thought of the matter of drinking healths and more generally tavern culture at large. We won't get a full answer yet, but what small glimpse into his life we may will help set the stage for future exploration.

Barrett Wendell, in his biography of the aforementioned Puritan, published in 1891, Cotton Mather, the Puritan Priest, gives as an example of his good humor, the following anecdote in Mather's own words:

"a company of vain, wicked men, having inflamed their blood in a tavern at Boston, & seeing that reverend, meek, & holy minister of Christ... coming along the street, one of them tells his companion, `I'll go', saith he, `& put a trick on old Cotton.' Down he goes, & crossing his way, whispers these words into his ear: `Cotton,' said he, `thou art an old fool.' Mr. Cotton replied, `I confess I am so: the Lord make both me & thee wiser than we are, even wise unto salvation.'"

It's worth noting, perhaps, that when Cotton uses the word vain to describe these men, he likely does not mean they were having or showing undue or excessive pride in their appearance or achievements like some kind of colonial metrosexuals, but rather that they were irreverent and blasphemous and that they were living meaningless lives and that they likely were doomed to suffer in hell for all of eternity.

So these drunk troublemakers go a play a "trick" on old Cotton which culminates in telling him he is an "old fool". It's not clear if there was more to the trick than that. But as thoroughly humorous as the manner in which Cotton dealt with these men may have been, citing the Lord in the way that he did, it provides more a testament to Cotton's faith in his Calvinist way of living than it does illuminate his views on drinking culture. He may have found these men "wicked" and "vain", but that is well short of a complete denunciation of taverns or the tavern goers of the day.

We'll have to come back to Cotton Mather, perhaps after sketching in a little more detail some of the relevant contours of the time in which he lived.

DRINKING HEALTHS

John Winthrop

Here at Drinking Healths, we'll explore the spirit of our namesake custom, from cutting edge grog culture here in the New World to England's traditions of yore.

We begin with our Massachusetts Bay Colony founder John Winthrop's view on the matter. From Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana, on the subject of Governor Winthrop's view on drinking healths:

There was one civil custom used in (and in few but) the English nation, which this gentleman did endeavor to abolish in this country, and that was the usage of drinking to one another. For although by drinking to one another, no more is meant than an act of courtesy, when one going to drink does invite another to do so too, for the same ends with himself; nevertheless the Governor (not altogether unlike to CLEOMENES, of whom it is reported by PLUTARCH he never urged the unwilling to drink,) considered the impertinency and insignificancy of this usage as to any of those ends that are usually pretended for it; and that it indeed ordinarily served for no ends at all, but only to provoke persons unto unseasonable and perhaps unreasonable drinking, and at last produce that abominable health drinking which the fathers of old so severely rebuked in the Pagans. Wherefore, in his own most hospitable house he left it off; not out of any silly or stingy fancy, but merely by his example a greater temperance, with liberty of drinking, might be recommended, and sundry inconveniences of drinking avoided. And his example began to be much followed by the sober people in this country until an order of Court came to be made against that ceremony in drinking, and then the old wont violently returned with a Niti mur in Vetitum.