Use wine according to the rule of the Apostle. For he says to Timothy: Use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your frequent infirmities (1 Tim. V). For when he says 'a little,' it is shown that it is to be drunk almost medicinally, not to drunkenness. For in another place the same Apostle says thus: When you said 'wine,' you said 'every vice.' For drunkenness is a mortal crime: it is reckoned among murders and adulteries or fornications. Thus the drunkenness of wine casts out from the kingdom of God, just as the deed of adultery, or murder, or the disgraces of other crimes. The Apostle confirms this when he says: Do not err:
neither fornicators, nor those who serve idols, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor those who lie with men, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor the slanderous, nor the rapacious shall possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor. VI). See how greatly to be execrated is drunkenness, that it casts out its own lovers even from the kingdom of God. See also how terribly the prophet rebukes those given to wine, for he says: Woe to you that are mighty to drink wine, and stout men to mingle drunkenness. Woe to you that rise up early to follow drunkenness, and to drink until evening, that you may be inflamed with wine (Isa. V). Noah drank wine, and lulled by drunkenness, was bared in the more shameful part of his body (Gen. IX):
that you may know how the human mind is thus thrown into disorder by wine, and the reason of the human mind dulled, so that it remembers not even itself, much less even God. And although that drunkenness and nakedness of Noah contains the mystery of Christ's passion and death, yet in the letter it conveys the error of the deed. Lot, sodden with wine, committed incest with his daughters (Gen. XIX), nor felt his error; from which incestuous lying-together are born the Moabites and the Ammonites. And the Lord says: The Moabites and the Ammonites shall not enter into my Church even to the tenth generation (Deut. XXIII). Perceive how the fullness of wine is to be fled, since it has been a cause of scandal and fault even to the patriarchs.
Therefore even the virgin who flourishes in bodily strength does well if she abstains altogether from wine. But the weak and feeble woman, it is fitting, should use wine as medicine, not for intoxication.