Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/101

it. However by all means compotations and feastings must be laid aside. At least used at rare intervals, with great caution and as in a medicinal way, as a counterpoize to fasting. That constitution is best which will bear extremes. Temperance is the great sauce to all other human felicitys. This only satiates but never cloys. This is a pleasure that refines they mind, invigorates the body, preserves the estate, renders us superior to fortune, out of the reach of adversity. This is a vertue which is its own reward; the parent of regular passions, of sweet contentment, of healthful progeny, of happy youth, of vigorous old age and long life. If excess in our thoughtless, juvenile days, or a habit of it in more advanced age, has been the occasion of the distemper, let us amend of it. But especially let not this noble remedy be, the occasion of our continuing therein, least a worse evil come upon us, than the gout. 'Tis a vast, invaluable happyness, with the moderate use of the good things of life, to be cur'd of this distemper, when it comes. But if we presume too much upon it, we are unworthy of the remedy, and will probably find other instances of the divine displeasure. The antient heathen, who under the notion of Apollo the God of Medicin, pictur'd out that person in the deity, to whom the fa-