23 Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.



Ver. 23. Drink no longer water] Timothy, living among the luxurious Ephesians, was so abstemious that the apostle is fain to prescribe him physic. Hypocrites will be chaste only in the mountains where are no women, and sober in Scythia where are no vines; but Lot was chaste in the midst of Sodom, and Anacharsis temperate among the debauched Athenians. The faithful in the world are like a pearl in a puddle; they lose nothing of their virtue, though amidst the vicious; like heavenly salamanders, they remain unscorched in the fire; like fishes, they retain their freshness in the salt waters.



But use a little wine] Modice, hoc est medice, pro remedio parcius, non pro deliciis redundantius, saith Ambrose; who also somewhere relateth of one Theotimus (a good name but a bad man) that he was so far from taking St Paul’s advice, that having a disease upon his body, and told by the physicians that unless he drank less wine he was like to lose his eyes, Vale lumen amicum, " Farewell, sweet eyesight," said he, choosing rather to lose his sight than his sin; so will many their souls; being like affected to their base lusts, as the panther is said to be to man’s dung, which it exceedingly desireth and maketh after.