(5) According to this sacred explanation of good cheer, even Almighty God, Himself the Author of all good things, is said to be inebriated, by reason of the super-full, and beyond conception, and ineffable, immeasurableness, of the good cheer, or to speak more properly, good condition of Almighty God. For, as regards us, in the worst sense, drunkenness is both an immoderate repletion, and being out of mind and wits; so, in the best sense, respecting God, we ought not to imagine drunkenness as anything else beyond the super-full immeasurableness of all good things pre-existing in Him as Cause. But, even in respect to being out of wits, which follows upon drunkenness, we must consider the pre-eminence of Almighty God, which is above conception, in which He overtops our conception, as being above conception and above being conceived, and above being itself; and in short, Almighty God is inebriated with, and outside of, all good things whatever, as being at once a super-full hyperbole of every immeasurableness of them all; and again, as dwelling outside and beyond the whole. Starting then from these, we will take in the same fashion even the feasting of the pious, in the Kingdom of Almighty God. For He says, the King Himself will come and make them recline, and will Himself minister to them. Now these things manifest a common and concordant communion of the holy, upon the good things of God, and a church of the first born, whose names are written in heavens; and spirits of just men made perfect by all good things, and replete with all good things; and the reclining, we imagine, a cessation from their many labours, and a life without pain; and a godly citizenship in light and place of living souls, replete with every holy bliss, and an ungrudging provision of every sort of blessed goods; within which they are filled with every delight; whilst Jesus both makes them recline, and ministers to them, and furnishes this delight; and Himself bequeaths their everlasting rest; and at once distributes and pours forth the fulness of good things.

(42) And they ate and drank and arose and remained with their asses.

(7) And he rejoiced and drank of this wine, he and his children with joy*

(17) Only the Spirit shows thus much, that to them is delivered and intrusted the weighty Talent, and the Key; and they are drowned in the Pleasures of the Flesh, and have buried their weighty Talent in the Earth, and have lost the Key in their proud Drunkenness.

(20) Now if any one should in Drunkenness or Fulness fall upon them, and plunge himself into Perdition, let him bear his own Blame; he has need of a Light in his Heart, that his Understanding and Mind may be well governed.

(24) Thus men suffer themselves easily to be turned away, and so live in their Drunkenness. And

(1) Whither stumble ye, sots, who have sopped up the wine of ignorance and can so far not carry it that ye already even spew it forth? Stay ye, be sober, gaze upwards with the [true] eyes of the heart! And if ye cannot all, yet ye at least who can! For that the ill of ignorance doth pour o`er all the earth and overwhelm the soul that's battened down within the body, preventing it from fetching port within Salvation's harbors.

(47) And they all drank of it. And he said unto them,

(19) Then by the practice of temperance men seek health: and by cramming themselves, and wallowing in potations at feasts, they attract diseases.

(148) But these Spirits elevating themselves thus, and triumphing so fiercely and vehemently one in another, and rising up against the Right of Nature, by that Means they kindled the qualifying or fountain Spirits an exceeding Deal too much; one the astringent Quality attracted or compassed the Body too hard together, so that the sweet Water was dried up.

(67) But those waters shall in those days serve for the kings and the mighty and the exalted, and those who dwell on the earth, for the healing of the body, but for the punishment of the spirit; now their spirit is full of lust, that they may be punished in their body, for they have denied the Lord of Spirits and see their punishment daily, and yet believe not in His name.

(16) Filled with insatiable desires, full of hypocrisy, pride and arrogance, holding unwholesome views through delusion, they work with unholy resolve;

(18) The Spirit has a long time waited on them, and importuned them that they would once open the Door, for the clear Day is at Hand, yet they walk up and down in their Drunkenness, seeking for the Key, when they have it about them, though they know it not; and so they go up and down in their proud and covetous Drunkenness, always seeking about like the Country-man for his Horse, who all the while he went seeking for him was riding upon the Back of that very Horse he looked for.

(16) Self-honored, stubborn, filled with the pride and intoxication of wealth, they perform sacrifices in name with hypocrisy, without regard to ordinance.

(36) Strong wine made from the juice of the grape was looked upon as symbolic of the false life and false light of the universe, for it was produced by a false process--artificial fermentation. The rational faculties are clouded by strong drink, and the animal nature, liberated from bondage, controls the individual--facts which necessarily were of the greatest spiritual significance. As the lower nature is the eternal tempter seeking co lead man into excesses which inhibit the spiritual faculties, the grape and its product were used to symbolize the Adversary.