(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all mistakes found.)

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing intially
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi =
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute =
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe,
when necessary.

TERTULLIAN.

ON FASTING.(1)

IN OPPOSITION TO THE PSYCHICS.

[TRANSLATED BY THE REV. S. THELWALL.]

CHAP. I.--CONNECTION OF GLUTTONY AND LUST. GROUNDS OF PSYCHICAL OBJECTIONS
AGAINST THE MONTANISTS.

   I Should wonder at the Psychics, if they were enthralled to
voluptuousness alone, which leads them to repeated marriages, if they were
not likewise bursting with gluttony, which leads them to hate fasts. Lust
without voracity would certainly be considered a monstrous phenomenon;
since these two are so united and concrete, that, had there been any
possibility of disjoining them, the pudenda would not have been affixed to
the belly itself rather than elsewhere. Look at the body: the region (of
these members) is one and the same. In short, the order of the vices is
proportionate to the arrangement of the members. First, the belly; and then
immediately the materials of all other species of lasciviousness are laid
subordinately to daintiness: through love of eating, love of impurity finds
passage. I recognise, therefore, animal(2) faith by its care of the flesh
(of which it wholly consists)--as prone to manifold feeding as to manifold
marrying--so that it deservedly accuses the spiritual discipline, which
according to its ability opposes it, in this species of continence as well;
imposing, as it does, reins upon the appetite, through taking, sometimes no
meals, or late meals, or dry meals, just as upon lust, through allowing but
one marriage.

   It is really irksome to engage with such: one is really ashamed to
wrangle about subjects the very defence of which is offensive to modesty.
For how am I to protect chastity and sobriety without taxing their
adversaries? What those adversaries are I will once for all mention: they
are the exterior and interior botuli of the Psychics. It is these which
raise controversy with the Paraclete; it is on this account that the New
Prophecies are rejected: not that Montanus and Priscilla and Maximilia
preach another God, nor that they disjoin Jesus Christ (from God), nor that
they overturn any particular rule of faith or hope, but that they plainly
teach more frequent fasting than marrying. Concerning the limit of
marrying, we have already published a defence of monogamy.(3) Now our
battle is the battle of the secondary (or rather the primary) continence,
in regard of the chastisement of diet. They charge us with keeping fasts of
our own; with prolonging our Stations generally into the evening; with
observing xerophagies likewise, keeping our food unmoistened by any flesh,
and by any juiciness, and by any kind of specially succulent fruit; and
with not eating or drinking anything with a winey flavour; also with
abstinence from the bath, congruent with our dry diet. They are therefore
constantly reproaching us with NOVELTY; concerning the unlawfulness of
which they lay down a prescriptive rule, that either it must be adjudged
heresy, if (the point in dispute) is a human presumption; or else
pronounced pseudo-prophecy, if it is a spiritual declaration; provided
that, either way, we who reclaim hear (sentence of) anathema.

CHAP. II.--ARGUMENTS OF THE PSYCHICS, DRAWN FROM THE LAW, THE GOSPEL, THE
ACTS, THE EPISTLES, AND HEATHENISH PRACTICES.

   For, so far as pertains to fasts, they oppose to us the definite days
appointed by God: as when, in Leviticus, the Lord enjoins upon Moses the
tenth day of the seventh month (as) a day of atonement, saying, "Holy shall
be to you the day, and ye shall vex your souls; and every soul which shall
not have been vexed in that day shall be exterminated from his people."(1)
At all events, in the Gospel they think that those days were definitely
appointed for fasts in which "the Bridegroom was taken away;"(2) and that
these are now the only legitimate days for Christian fasts, the legal and
prophetical antiquities having been abolished: for wherever it suits their
wishes, they recognise what is the meaning of" the Law and the prophets
until John."(3) Accordingly, (they think) that, with regard to the future,
fasting was to be indifferently observed, by the New Discipline, of choice,
not of command, according to the times and needs of each individual: that
this, withal, had been the observance of the apostles, imposing (as they
did) no other yoke of definite fasts to be observed by all generally, nor
similarly of Stations either, which (they think) have withal days of their
own (the fourth and sixth days of the week), but yet take a wide range
according to individual judgment, neither subject to the law of a given
precept, nor (to be protracted) beyond the last hour of the day, since even
prayers the ninth hour generally concludes, after Peter's example, which is
recorded in the Acts. Xerophagies, however, (they consider) the novel name
of a studied duty, and very much akin to heathenish superstition, like the
abstemious rigours which purify an Apis, an Isis, and a Magna Mater, by a
restriction laid upon certain kinds of food; whereas faith, free in
Christ,(4) owes no abstinence from particular meats to the Jewish Law even,
admitted as it has been by the apostle once for all to the whole range of
the meat-market(5)--(the apostle, I say), that detester of such as, in like
manner as they prohibit marrying, so bid us abstain from meats created by
God.(6) And accordingly (they think) us to have been even then prenoted as
"in the latest times departing from the faith, giving heed to spirits which
seduce the world, having a conscience inburnt with doctrines of liars."(7)
(Inburnt?) With what fires, prithee? The fires, I ween, which lead us to
repeated contracting of nuptials and daily cooking of dinners! Thus, too,
they affirm that we share with the Galatians the piercing rebuke (of the
apostle), as "observers of days, and of months, and of years."(8) Meantime
they huff in our teeth the fact that Isaiah withal has authoritatively
declared, "Not such a fast hath the Lord elected," that is, not abstinence
from food, but the works of righteousness, which he there appends:(9) and
that the Lord Himself in the Gospel has given a compendious answer to every
kind of scrupulousness in regard to food; "that not by such things as are
introduced into the mouth is a man defiled, but by such as are produced out
of the mouth;"(10) while Himself withal was wont to eat and drink till He
made Himself noted thus; "Behold, a gormandizer and a drinker:"(11)
(finally), that so, too, does the apostle teach that "food commendeth us
not to God; since we neither abound if we eat, nor lack if we eat not."(12)

   By the instrumentalities of these and similar passages, they subtlely
tend at last to such a point, that every one who is somewhat prone to
appetite finds it possible to regard as superfluous, and not so very
necessary, the duties of abstinence from, or diminution or delay of, food,
since "God," forsooth, "prefers the works of justice and of innocence." And
we know the quality of the hortatory addresses of carnal conveniences, how
easy it is to say, "I must believe with my whole heart;(13) I must love
God, and my neighbour as myself:(14) for 'on these two precepts the whole
Law hangeth, and the prophets,' not on the emptiness of my lungs and
intestines."

CHAP. III.--THE PRINCIPLE OF FASTING TRACED BACK TO ITS EARLIEST SOURCE.

   Accordingly we are bound to affirm, before proceeding further, this
(principle), which is in danger of being secretly subverted; (namely), of
what value in the sight of God this "emptiness" you speak of is: and, first
of all, whence has proceeded the rationale itself of earning the favour of
God in this way. For the necessity of the observance will then be
acknowledged, when the authority of a rationale, to be dated back from the
very beginning, shall have shone out to view.

   Adam had received from God the law of not tasting "of the tree of
recognition of good and evil," with the doom of death to ensue upon
tasting. (15) However, even (Adam) himself at that time, reverting to the
condition of a Psychic after the spiritual ecstasy in which he had
prophetically interpreted that "great sacrament"(16) with reference to
Christ and the Church, and no longer being "capable of the things which
were the Spirit's," (17) yielded more readily to his belly than to God,
heeded the meat rather than the mandate, and sold salvation for his gullet!
He ate, in short, and perished; saved (as he would) else (have been), if he
had preferred to fast from one little tree: so that, even from this early
date, animal faith may recognise its own seed, deducing from thence onward
its appetite for carnalities and rejection of spiritualities. I hold,
therefore, that from the very beginning the murderous gullet was to be
punished with the torments and penalties of hunger. Even if God had
enjoined no preceptive fasts, still, by pointing out the source whence Adam
was slain, He who had demonstrated the offence had left to; my intelligence
the remedies for the offence. Unbidden, I would, in such ways and at such
times as I might have been able, have habitually accounted food as poison,
and taken the antidote, hunger; through which to purge the primordial cause
of death--a cause transmitted to me also, concurrently with my very
generation; certain that God willed that whereof He nilled the contrary,
and confident enough that the care of continence will be pleasing to Him by
whom I should have understood that the crime of incontinence had been
condemned. Further: since He Himself both commands fasting, and calls "a
soul, wholly shattered "--properly, of course, by straits of diet--" a
sacrifice;" who will any longer doubt that of all dietary macerations the
rationale has been this, that by a renewed interdiction of food and
observation of precept the primordial sin might now be expiated, in order
that man may make God satisfaction through the self-same causative material
through which he had offended, that is, through interdiction of food; and
thus, in emulous wise, hunger might rekindle, just as satiety had
extinguished, salvation, contemning for the sake of one unlawful more
lawful (gratifications)?

CHAP. IV.--THE OBJECTION IS RAISED, WHY, THEN, WAS THE LIMIT OF LAWFUL FOOD
EXTENDED AFTER THE FLOOD? THE ANSWER TO IT.

   This rationale was constantly kept in the eye of the providence of God-
-modulating all things, as He does, to suit the exigencies of the times--
lest any from the opposite side, with the view of demolishing our
proposition, should say: "Why, in that case, did not God forthwith
institute some definite restriction upon food? nay, rather, why did He
withal enlarge His permission? For, at the beginning indeed, it had only
been the food of herbs and trees which He had assigned to man: 'Behold, I
have given you all grass fit for sowing, seeding seed, which is upon the
earth; and every tree which hath in itself the fruit of seed fit for sowing
shall be to you for food.'(2) Afterwards, however, after enumerating to
Noah the subjection (to him) of 'all beasts of the earth, and fowls of the
heaven, and things moving on earth, and the fish of the sea, and every
creeping thing,' He says, 'They shall be to you for food: just like grassy
vegetables have I given (them) you universally: but flesh in the blood of
its own soul shall ye not eat.'(3) For even by this very fact, that He
exempts from eating that flesh only the 'soul' of which is not out-shed
through 'blood,' it is manifest that He has conceded the use of all other
flesh." To this we reply, that it was not suitable for man to be burdened
with any further special law of abstinence, who so recently showed himself
unable to tolerate so light an interdiction--of one single fruit, to wit;
that, accordingly, having had the rein relaxed, he was to be strengthened
by his very liberty; that equally after the deluge, in the reformation of
the human race, (as before it), one law--of abstaining from blood--was
sufficient, the use of all things else being allowed. For the Lord had
already shown His judgment through the deluge; had, moreover, likewise
issued a comminatory warning through the "requisition of blood from the
hand of a brother, and from the hand of every beast."(4) And thus,
preministering the justice of judgment, He issued the materials of liberty;
preparing through allowance an undergrowth of discipline; permitting all
things, with a view to take some away; meaning to "exact more" if He had
"committed more;"(5) to command abstinence since He had foresent
indulgence: in order that (as we have said) the primordial sin might be the
more expiated by the operation of a greater abstinence in the (midst of
the) opportunity of a greater licence.

CHAP. V. --PROCEEDING TO THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL, TERTULLIAN SHOWS THAT
APPETITE WAS AS CONSPICUOUS AMONG THEIR SINS AS IN ADAM'S CASE. THEREFORE
THE RESTRAINTS OF THE LEVITICAL LAW WERE IMPOSED.

   At length, when a familiar people began to be chosen by God to Himself,
and the restoration of man was able to be essayed, then all the laws and
disciplines were imposed, even such as curtailed food; certain things being
prohibited as unclean, in order that man, by observing a perpetual
abstinence in certain particulars, might at last the more easily tolerate
absolute fasts. For the first People had withal reproduced the first man's
crime, being found more prone to their belly than to God, when, plucked out
from the harshness of Egyptian servitude "by the mighty hand and sublime
arm"(6) of God, they were seen to be its lord, destined to the "land
flowing with milk and honey;, but forthwith, stumbled at the surrounding
spectacle of an incopious desert sighing after the lost enjoyments of
Egyptian satiety, they murmured against Moses and Aaron "Would that we had
been smitten to the heart by the Lord, and perished in the land of Egypt,
when we were wont to sit over our jars of flesh and eat bread unto the
full! How leddest thou us out into these deserts, to kill this assembly by
famine?"(1) From the self-same belly preference were they destined (at
last) to deplore(3) (the fate of) the self-same leaden of their own and
eye-witnesses of (the power of) God, whom, by their regretful hankering
after flesh, and their recollection of their Egyptian plenties, they were
ever exacerbating: "Who shall feed us with flesh? there have come into our
mind the fish which in Egypt we were wont to eat freely, and the cucumbers,
and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. But now our
soul is arid nought save manna do our eyes see!"(4) Thus used they, too,
(like the Psychics), to find the angelic bread s of xerophagy displeasing:
they preferred the fragrance of garlic and onion to that of heaven. And
therefore from men so ungrateful all that was more pleasing and appetizing
was withdrawn, for the sake at once of punishing gluttony and exercising
continence, that the former might be condemned, the latter practically
learned.

CHAP. VI.--THE PHYSICAL TENDENCIES OF FASTING AND FEEDING CONSIDERED. THE
CASES OF MOSES AND ELIJAH.

   Now, if there has been temerity in our retracing to primordial
experiences the reasons for God's having laid, and our duty (for the sake
of God) to lay, restrictions upon food, let us consult common conscience.
Nature herself will plainly tell with what qualities she is ever wont to
find us endowed when she sets us, before taking food and drink, with our
saliva still in a virgin state, to the transaction of matters, by the sense
especially whereby things divine are, handled; whether (it be not) with a
mind much more vigorous, with a heart much more alive, than when that whole
habitation of our interior man, stuffed with meats, inundated with wines,
fermenting for the purpose of excremental secretion, is already being
turned into a premeditatory of privies, (a premeditatory) where, plainly,
nothing is so proximately supersequent as the savouring of lasciviousness.
"The people did eat and drink, and they arose to play."(6) Understand the
modest language of Holy Scripture: "play," unless it had been immodest, it
would not have reprehended. On the other hand, how many are there who are
mindful of religion, when the seats of the memory are occupied, the limbs
of wisdom impeded? No one will suitably, fitly, usefully, remember God at
that time when it is customary for a man to forget his own self. All
discipline food either slays or else wounds. I am a liar, if the Lord
Himself, when upbraiding Israel with forgetfulness, does not impute the
cause to "fulness:" "(My) beloved is waxen thick, and fat, and distent, and
hath quite forsaken God, who made him, and hath gone away from the Lord his
Saviour."(7) In short, in the Self-same Deuteronomy, when bidding
precaution to be taken against the self-same cause, He says: "Lest, when
thou shalt have eaten, and drunken, and built excellent houses, thy sheep
and oxen being multiplied, and (thy) silver and gold, thy heart be elated,
and thou be forgetful of the Lord thy God."(8) To the corrupting power of
riches He made the enormity of edacity antecedent, for which riches
themselves are the procuring agents.(9) Through them, to wit, had "the
heart of the People been made thick, lest they should see with the eyes,
and hear with the ears, and understand with a heart"(10) obstructed by the
"fats" of which He had expressly forbidden the eating, (11) teaching man
not to be studious of the stomach.(12)

   On the other hand, he whose "heart" was habitually found "lifted up"
(13) rather than fattened up, who in forty days and as many nights
maintained a fast above the power of human nature, while spiritual faith
subministered strength (to his body),(14) both saw with his eyes God's
glory, and heard with his ears God's voice, and understood with his heart
God's law: while He taught him even then (by experience) that man liveth
not upon bread alone, but upon every word of God; in that the People,
though fatter than he, could not constantly contemplate even Moses himself,
fed as he had been upon God, nor his leanness, sated as it had been with
His glory!(15) Deservedly, therefore, even while in the flesh, did the Lord
show Himself to him, the colleague of His own fasts, no less than to
Elijah.(16) For Elijah withal had, by this fact primarily, that he had
imprecated a famine,(17) already sufficiently devoted himself to fasts:
"The Lord liveth," he said, "before whom I am standing in His sight, if
there shall be dew in these years, and rain-shower."(1) Subsequently,
fleeing from threatening Jezebel, after one single (meal of) food and
drink, which he had found on being awakened by an angel, he too himself, in
a space  of forty days and nights, his belly empty, his mouth dry, arrived
at Mount Horeb; where, when he had made a cave his inn, with how familiar a
meeting with God was he received!(2) "What (doest) thou, Elijah, here?"(3)
Much more friendly was this voice than, "Adam, where art thou?"(4) For the
latter voice was uttering a threat to a fed man, the former soothing a
fasting one. Such is the prerogative of circumscribed food, that it makes
God tent-fellow(5) with man--peer, in truth, with peer! For if the eternal
God will not hunger, as He testifies through Isaiah,(6) this will be the
time for man to be made equal with God, when he lives without food.

CHAP. VII.--FURTHER EXAMPLES FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT IN FAVOUR OF FASTING.

   And thus we have already proceeded to examples, in order that, by its
profitable efficacy, we may unfold the powers of this duty which reconciles
God, even when angered, to man.

   Israel, before their gathering together by Samuel on occasion of the
drawing of water at Mizpeh, had sinned; but so immediately do they wash
away the sin by a fast, that the peril of battle is dispersed by them
simultaneously (with the water on the ground). At the very moment when
Samuel was offering the holocaust (in no way do we learn that the clemency
of God was more procured than by the abstinence of the people), and the
aliens were advancing to battle, then and there "the Lord thundered with a
mighty voice upon the aliens, and they were thrown into confusion, and felt
in a mass in the sight of Israel; and the men of Israel went forth out of
Mizpeh, and pursued the aliens, and smote them unto Bethor,"--the unfed
(chasing) the fed, the unarmed the armed. Such will be the strength of them
who "fast to God."(7) For such, Heaven fights. You have (before you) a
condition upon which (divine) defence will be granted, necessary even to
spiritual wars.

   Similarly, when the king of the Assyrians, Sennacherib, after already
taking several cities, was volleying blasphemies and menaces against Israel
through Rabshakeh, nothing else (but fasting) diverted him from his
purpose, and sent him into the Ethiopias. After that, what else swept away
by the hand of the angel an hundred eighty and four thousand from his army
than Hezekiah the king's humiliation? if it is true, (as it is), that on
heating the announcement of the harshness of the foe, he rent his garment,
put on sackcloth, and bade the elders of the priests, similarly habited,
approach God through Isaiah--fasting being, of course, the escorting
attendant of their prayers.(8) For peril has no time for food, nor
sackcloth any care for satiety's refinements. Hunger is ever the attendant
of mourning, just as gladness is an accessory of fulness.

   Through this attendant of mourning, and (this) hunger, even that sinful
state, Nineveh, is freed from the predicted ruin. For repentance for sins
had sufficiently commended the fast, keeping it up in a space of three
days, starving out even the cattle with which God was not angry.(9) Sodom
also, and Gomorrah, would have escaped if they had fasted.(10) This remedy
even Ahab acknowledges. When, after his transgression and idolatry, and the
slaughter of Naboth, slain by Jezebel on account of his vineyard, Elijah
had upbraided him, "How hast thou killed, and possessed the inheritance? In
the place where dogs had licked up the blood of Naboth, thine also shall
they lick up,"--he "abandoned himself, and put sackcloth upon his flesh,
and fasted, and slept in sackcloth. And then (came) the word of the Lord
unto Elijah, Thou hast seen how Ahab hath shrunk in awe from my face: for
that he hath shrunk in awe I will not bring the hurt upon (him) in his own
days; but in the days of his son I will bring it upon (him)"--(his son),
who was not to fast.(11) Thus a God-ward fast is a work of reverential awe:
and by its means also Hannah the wife of Elkanah making suit, barren as she
had been beforetime, easily obtained from God the filling of her belly,
empty of food, with a son, ay, and a prophet.(12)

   Nor is it merely change of nature, or aversion of perils, or
obliteration of sins, but likewise the recognition of mysteries, which
fasts will merit from God. Look at Daniel's example. About the dream of the
King of Babylon all the sophists are troubled: they affirm that, without
external aid, it cannot be discovered by human skill. Daniel alone,
trusting to God, and knowing what would tend to the deserving of God's
favour, requires a space of three days, fasts with his fraternity, and--his
prayers thus commended--is instructed throughout as to the order and
signification of the dream; quarter is granted to the tyrant's sophists;
God is glorified; Daniel is honoured; destined as he was to receive, even
subsequently also, no less a favour of God in the first year, of King
Darius, when, after careful and repeated meditation upon the times
predicted by Jeremiah, he set his face to God in fasts, and sackcloth, and
ashes. For the angel, withal, sent to him, immediately professed this to be
the cause of the Divine approbation: "I am come," he said, "to demonstrate
to thee, since thou art pitiable"(1)--by fasting, to wit. If to God he was
"pitiable," to the lions in the den he was formidable, where, six days
fasting, he had breakfast provided him by an angel.(3)

CHAP. VIII.--EXAMPLES OF A SIMILAR KIND FROM THE NEW.

   We produce, too, our remaining (evidences). For we now hasten to modern
proofs.

   On the threshold of the Gospel,(3) Anna the prophetess, daughter of
Phanuel, "who both recognised the infant Lord, and preached many things
about Him to such as were expecting the redemption of Israel," after the
pre-eminent distinction of long-continued and single-husbanded widowhood,
is additionally graced with the testimony of "fastings" also; pointing out,
as she does, what the duties are which should characterize attendants of
the Church, and (pointing out, too, the fact) that Christ is understood by
none more than by the once married and often fasting.

   By and by the Lord Himself consecrated His own baptism (and, in His
own, that of all) by fasts;(4) having (the power) to make "loaves out of
stones," say, to make Jordan flow with wine perchance, if He had been such
a "glutton and toper."(6) Nay, rather, by the virtue of contemning food He
was initiating "the new man" into "a severe handling" of "the old,"(7) that
He might show that (new man) to the devil, again seeking to tempt him by
means of food, (to be) too strong for the whole power of hunger.

   Thereafter He prescribed to fasts a law--that they are to be performed
"without sadness:"(8) for why should what is salutary be sad? He taught
likewise that fasts are to be the weapons for battling with the more
direful demons:(9) for what wonder if the same operation is the instrument
of the iniquitous spirit's egress as of the Holy Spirit's ingress? Finally,
granting that upon the centurion Cornelius, even before baptism, the
honourable gift of the Holy Spirit, together with the gift of prophecy
besides, had hastened to descend, we see that his fasts had been heard,(10)
I think, moreover, that the apostle too, in the Second of Corinthians,
among his labours, and perils, and hardships, after "hunger and thirst,"
enumerates "fasts" also "very many"

CHAP. IX.--FROM FASTS ABSOLUTE TERTULLIAN COMES TO PARTIAL ONES    AND
XEROPHAGIES.

   This principal species in the category of dietary restriction may
already afford a prejudgment concerning the inferior operations of
abstinence also, as being themselves too, in proportion to their measure,
useful or necessary. For the exception of certain kinds from use of food is
a partial fast. Let us therefore look into the question of the novelty or
vanity of xerophagies, to see whether in them too we do not find an
operation alike of most ancient as of most efficacious religion.

   I return to Daniel and his brethren, preferring as they did a diet of
vegetables and the beverage of water to the royal dishes and decanters, and
being found as they were therefore "more handsome" (lest any be
apprehensive on the score of his paltry body, to boot!), sides being
spiritually cultured into the bargain.(12) For God gave to the young men
knowledge and understanding in every kind of literature, and to Daniel in
every word, and in dreams, and in every kind of wisdom; which (wisdom) was
to  make him wise in this very thing also,--namely, by what means the
recognition of mysteries was to be obtained from God. Finally, in the third
year of Cyrus king of the Persians, when he had fallen into careful and
repeated meditation on a  vision, he provided another form of humiliation.
"In those days," he says, "I Daniel was mourning during three weeks:
pleasant bread I ate not; flesh and wine entered not into my mouth; with
oil I was not anointed; until three weeks were consummated:" which being
elapsed, an angel was sent out (from God), addressing him on this wise:
"Daniel, thou art a man pitiable; fear not: since, from the first day on
which thou gavest thy soul to recogitation and to humiliation before God,
thy word hath been heard, and I am entered at thy word."(13) Thus the
"pitiable" spectacle and the humiliation of xerophagies expel fear, and
attract the ears of God, and make men masters of secrets.

   I return likewise to Elijah. When the ravens had been wont to satisfy
him with "bread and flesh,"(1) why was it that afterwards, at Beersheba of
Judea, that certain angel, after rousing him from sleep, offered him,
beyond doubt, bread  alone, and water?(2) Had ravens been wanting, to feed
him more liberally? or had it been difficult to the "angel" to carry away
from some pan of the banquet-room of the king some attendant with his
amply-furnished waiter, and transfer him to Elijah, just as the breakfast
of the reapers was carried into the den of lions and presented to Daniel in
his hunger? But it behoved that an example should be set, teaching us that,
at a time of pressure and persecution and whatsoever difficulty, we must
live on xerophagies. With such food did David express his own exomologesis;
"eating ashes indeed as it were bread," that is, bread dry and foul like
ashes: "mingling, moreover, his drink with weeping"--of course, instead of
wine.(3) For abstinence from wine withal has honourable badges of its own:
(an abstinence) which had dedicated Samuel, and consecrated Aaron, to God.
For of Samuel his mother said: "And wine and that which is intoxicating
shall he not drink:"(4) for such was her condition withal when praying to
God.(5) And the Lord said to Aaron "Wine and spirituous liquor shall ye not
drink, thou and thy son after thee, whenever ye shall enter the tabernacle,
or ascend unto the sacrificial altar; and ye shall not die."(6) So true is
it, that such as shall have ministered in the Church, being not sober,
shall "die." Thus, too, in recent times He upbraids lsrael: "And ye used to
give my sanctified ones wine to drink." And, moreover, this limitation upon
drink is the portion of xerophagy. Anyhow, wherever abstinence from wine is
either exacted by God or vowed by man, there let there be understood
likewise a restriction of food fore-furnishing a formal type to drink. For
the quality of the drink is correspondent to that of the eating. It is not
probable that a man should sacrifice to God half his appetite; temperate in
waters, and intemperate in meats. Whether, moreover, the apostle had any
acquaintance with xerophagies--(the apostle) who had repeatedly practised
greater rigours, "hunger, and thirst, and fists many," who had forbidden
"drunkennesses and revellings"(7)--we have a sufficient evidence even from
the case of his disciple Timotheus; whom when he admonishes, "for the sake
of his stomach and constant weaknesses," to use "a little wine,"(8) from
which he was abstaining not from rule, but from devotion--else the custom
would rather have been beneficial to his stomach--by this very fact he has
advised abstinence from wine as "worthy of God," which, on a ground of
necessity, he has dissuaded.

CHAP. X.--OF STATIONS, AND OF THE HOURS OF PRAYER.

   In like manner they censure on the count of novelty our Stations as
being enjoined; some, moreover, (censure them) too as being prolonged
habitually too late, saying that this duty also ought to be observed of
free choice, and not continued beyond the ninth hour,--(deriving their
rule), of course, from their own practice. Well: as to that which pertains
to the question of injunction, I will once for all give a reply to suit all
causes. Now, (turning) to the point which is proper to this particular
cause--concerning the limit of time, I mean--I must first demand from
themselves whence they derive this prescriptive law for concluding Stations
at the ninth hour. If it is from the fact that we read that Peter and he
who was with him entered the temple "at the ninth (hour), the hour of
prayer," who will prove to me that they had that day been performing a
Station, so as to interpret the ninth hour as the hour for the conclusion
and discharge of the Station? Nay, but you would more easily find that
Peter at the sixth hour had, for the sake of taking food, gone up first on
the roof to pray;(9) so that the sixth hour of the day may the rather be
made the limit to this duty, which (in Peter's case) was apparently to
finish that duty, after prayer. Further: since in the self-same commentary
of Luke the third hour is demonstrated as an hour of prayer, about which
hour it was that they who had received the initiatory gift of the Holy
Spirit were held for drunkards;(10) and the sixth, at which Peter went up
on the roof; and the ninth, at which they entered the temple: why should we
not understand that, with absolutely perfect indifference, we must pray(11)
always, and everywhere, and at every time; yet still that these three
hours, as being more marked in things human--(hours) which divide the day,
which distinguish businesses, which re-echo in the public ear--have
likewise ever been of special solemnity in divine prayers? A persuasion
which is sanctioned also by the corroboratire fact of Daniel praying thrice
in the day;(12) of course, through exception of certain stated hours, no
other, moreover, than the more marked and subsequently apostolic (hours)--
the third, the sixth, the ninth. And hence, accordingly, I shall affirm
that Peter too had been led rather by ancient usage to the observance of
the ninth hour, praying at the third specific interval, (the interval) of
final prayer.

   These (arguments), moreover; (we have advanced) for their sakes who
think that they are acting in conformity with Peter's model, (a model) of
which they are ignorant: not as if we slighted the ninth hour, (an hour)
which, on the fourth and sixth days of the week, we most highly honour; but
because, of those things which are, observed on the ground of tradition, we
are bound to adduce so much the more worthy reason, that they lack the
authority of Scripture, until by some signal celestial gift they be either
confirmed or else corrected. "And if," says (the apostle), "there are
matters which ye are ignorant about, the Lord will reveal to you."
Accordingly, setting out of the question the confirmer of all such things,
the Paraclete, the guide of universal truth,(2) inquire whether there be
not a worthier reason adduced among its for the observing of the ninth
hour; so that this reason (of ours) must be attributed even to Peter if he
observed a Station at the time in question. For (the practice) comes from
the death of the Lord; which death albeit it behoves to be commemorated
always, without difference of hours yet are we at that time more
impressively commended to its commemoration, according to the actual
(meaning of the) name of Station. For even soldiers, though never unmindful
of their military oath, yet pay a greater deference to Stations. And so the
"pressure" must be maintained up to that hour in which the orb--involved
from the sixth hour in a general darkness--performed for its dead Lord a
sorrowful act of duty; so that we too may then return to enjoyment when the
universe regained its sunshine.(3) If this savours more of the spirit of
Christian religion, while it celebrates more the glory of Christ,  I am
equally able, from the self-same order of events, to fix the condition of
late protraction of the Station; (namely), that we are to fast till a late
hour, awaiting the time of the Lord's sepulture, when Joseph took down and
entombed the body which he had requested. Thence (it follows) that it is
even irreligious for the flesh of the servants to take refreshment before
their Lord did.

   But let it suffice to have thus far joined issue on the argumentative
challenge; rebutting, as I have done, conjectures by conjectures, and yet
(as I think) by conjectures more worthy of a believer. Let us see whether
any such (principle) drawn from the ancient times takes us under its
patronage.

   In Exodus, was not that position of Moses, battling against Amalek by
prayers, maintained as it was perseveringly even till "sunset," a "late
Station?"(4) Think we that Joshua the son of Nun, when warring down the
Amorites, had breakfasted on that day on which he ordered the very elements
to keep a Station?(5) The sun "stood" in Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon;
the sun and the moon "stood in station until the People was avenged of his
enemies, and the sun stood in the mid heaven." When, moreover, (the sun)
did draw toward his setting and the end of the one day, there was no such
day beforetime and in the latest time (of course, (no day) so long), "that
God," says (the writer), "should hear a man"--(a man,) to be sure, the
sun's peer, so long persistent in his duty--a Station longer even than
late.

   At all events, Saul himself, when engaged in battle, manifestly
enjoined this duty: "Cursed (be) the man who shall have eaten bread until
evening, until I avenge me on mine enemy;" and his whole people tasted not
(food), and (yet) the whole earth was breakfasting! So solemn a sanction,
moreover, did God confer on the edict which enjoined that Station, that
Jonathan the son of Saul, although it had been in ignorance of the fast
having been appointed till a late hour that he had allowed himself a taste
of honey, was both presently convicted, by lot, of sin, and with difficulty
exempted from punishment through the prayer of the People:(6) for he had
been convicted of gluttony, although of a simple kind. But withal Daniel,
in the first year of King Darius, when, fasting in sackcloth and ashes, he
was doing exomologesis to God, said: "And while I was still speaking in
prayer, behold, the man whom I had seen in dreams at the beginning, swiftly
flying, approached me, as it were, at the hour of the evening
sacrifice."(7) This will be a "late" Station which, fasting until the
evening, sacrifices a fatter (victim of) prayer to God!(8)

CHAP XI.--OF THE RESPECT DUE TO "HUMAN AUTHORITY;" AND OF THE CHARGES OF
"HERESY" AND "PSEUDO-PROPHECY."

   But all these (instances) I believe to be unknown to those who are in a
state of agitation at our proceedings; or else known by the reading alone,
not by careful study as well; in accordance with the greater bulk of "the
unskilled"(9) among the overboastful multitude, to wit, of the Psychics.
This is why we have steered our course straight through the different
individual species of fastings, of xerophagies, of stations: in order that,
while we recount, according to the materials which we find in either
Testament, the advantages which the dutiful observances of abstinence from,
or curtailment or deferment of, food confer, we may refute those who
invalidate these things as empty observances; and again, while we similarly
point out in what rank of religious duty they have always had place, may
confute those who accuse them as novelties: for neither is that novel which
has always been, nor that empty which is useful.

   The question, however, still lies before us, that some of these
observances, having been commanded by God to man, have constituted this
practice legally binding; some, offered by man to God, have discharged some
votive obligation. Still, even a vow, when it has been accepted by God,
constitutes a law for the time to come, owing to the authority of the
Acceptor; for he who has given his approbation to a deed, when done, has
given a mandate for its doing thenceforward. And so from this
consideration, again, the wrangling of the opposite party is silenced,
while they say: "It is either a pseudo-prophecy, if it is a spiritual voice
which institutes these your solemnities; or else a heresy, if it is a human
presumption which devises them." For, while censuring that form in which
the ancient economies ran their course, and at the same time drawing out of
that form arguments to hurl back (upon us) which the very adversaries of
the ancient economies will in their turn be able to retort, they will be
bound either to reject those arguments, or else to undertake these proven
duties (which they impugn): necessarily so; chiefly because these very
duties (which they impugn), from whatsoever institutor they are, be he a
spiritual man or merely an ordinary believer, direct their course to the
honour of the same God as the ancient economies. For, indubitably, Both
heresy and pseudo-prophecy will, in the eyes of us who are all priests of
one only God the Creator and of His Christ, be judged by diversity of
divinity: and so far forth I defend this side indifferently, offering my
opponents to join issue on whatever ground they choose. "It is the spirit
of the devil," you say, O Psychic. And how is it that he enjoins duties
which belong to our God, and enjoins them to be offered to none other than
our God? Either contend that the devil works with our God, or else let the
Paraclete be held to be Satan. But you affirm it is "a human Antichrist:"
for by this name heretics are called in John.(1) And how is it that,
whoever he is, he has in (the name of) our Christ directed these duties
toward our Lord; whereas withal antichrists have (ever) gone forth
(professedly teaching) towards God, (but) in opposition to our Christ? On
which side, then, do you think the Spirit is confirmed as existing among
us; when He commands, or when He approves, what our God has always both
commanded and approved? But you again set up boundary-posts to God, as with
regard to grace, so with regard to discipline; as with regard to gifts, so,
too, with regard to solemnities: so that our observances are supposed to
have ceased in like manner as His benefits; and you thus deny that He still
continues to impose duties, because, in this case again, "the Law and the
prophets (were) until John." It remains for you to banish Him wholly,
being, as He is, so far as lies in you, so otiose.

CHAP. XII--OF THE NEED FOR soME PROTEST AGAINST THE PSYCHICS AND THEIR
SELF-INDULGENCE.

   For, by this time, in this respect as well as others, "you are reigning
in wealth and satiety"(1)--not making inroads upon such sins as fasts
diminish, nor feeling need of such revelations as xerophagies extort, nor
apprehending such wars of your own as Stations dispel. Grant that from the
time of John the Paraclete had grown mute; we ourselves would have arisen
as prophets to ourselves, for this cause chiefly: I say not now to bring
down by our prayers God's anger, nor to obtain his protection or grace; but
to secure by premunition the moral position of the "latest times;"(3)
enjoining every species of of tapeinophro'nhsis, since the prison must be
familiarized to us, and hunger and thirst practised, and capacity of
enduring as well the absence of food as anxiety about it acquired: in order
that the Christian may enter into prison in like condition as if he had
(just) come forth of it,--to suffer there not penalty, but discipline, and
not the world's tortures, but his own habitual observances; and to go forth
out of custody to (the final) conflict with all the more confidence, having
nothing of sinful false care of the flesh about him, so that the tortures
may not even have material to work on, since he is cuirassed in a mere dry
skin, and cased in horn to meet the claws, the succulence of his blood
already sent on (heavenward) before him, the baggage as it were of his
soul,--the soul herself withal now hastening (after it), having already, by
frequent fasting, gained a most intimate knowledge of death!

   Plainly, your habit is to furnish cookshops in the prisons to
untrustworthy martyrs, for fear they should miss their accustomed usages,
grow weary of life, (and) be stumbled at the novel discipline of
abstinence; (a discipline) which not even the well-known Pristinus--your
martyr, no Christian martyr--had ever come in contact with: he whom--
stuffed as he had long been, thanks to the facilities afforded by the "free
custody" (now in vogue, and) under an obligation, I suppose, to all the
baths (as if they were better than baptism!), and to all the retreats of
voluptuousness (as if they were more secret than those of the Church!), and
to all the allurements of this life (as if they were of more worth than
those of life eternal!), not to be willing to die--on the very last day of
trial, at high noon,  you premedicated with drugged wine as an antidote,
and so completely enervated, that on being tickled--for his intoxication
made it feel like tickling--with a few claws, he was unable any more to
make answer to the presiding officer interrogating him "whom he confessed
to be Lord;" and, being now put on the rack for this silence, when he could
utter nothing but hiccoughs and belchings, died in the very act of
apostasy! This is why they who preach sobriety are "false prophets;" this
why they who practise it are "heretics!" Why then hesitate to believe that
the Paraclete, whom you deny in a Montanus, exists in an Apicius?

CHAP. XIII.--OF THE INCONSISTENCIES OF THE PSYCHICS.

   You lay down a prescription that this faith has its solemnities
"appointed" by the Scriptures or the tradition of the ancestors; and that
no further addition in the way of observance must be added, on account of
the unlawfulness of innovation. Stand on that ground, if you can. For,
behold, I impeach you of fasting besides on the Paschal-day, beyond the
limits of those days in which "the Bridegroom was taken away;" and
interposing the half-fasts of Stations; and you, (I find), sometimes living
on bread and water, when it has seemed meet to each (so to do). In short,
you answer that "these things are to be done of choice, not of command."
You have changed your ground, therefore, by exceeding tradition, in
undertaking observances which have not been "appointed." But what kind of
deed is it, to permit to your own choice what you grant not to the command
of God? Shall human volition have more licence than Divine power? I am
mindful that I am free from the world,(1) not from God. Thus it is my part
to perform, without external suggestion thereto, an act of respect to my
Lord, it is His to enjoin. I ought not merely to pay a willing obedience to
Him, but withal to court Him; for the former I render to His command, the
latter to my own choice.

   But it is enough for me that it is a customary practice for the bishops
withal to issue mandates for fasts to the universal commonalty of the
Church; I do not mean for the special purpose of collecting contributions
of alms, as your beggarly fashion has it, but sometimes too from some
particular cause of ecclesiastical solicitude. And accordingly, if you
practise tapeinophro'nhsis at the bidding of a man's edict, and all
unitedly, how is it that in our case you set a brand upon the very unity
also of our fastings, and xerophagies, and Stations?--unless, perhaps, it
is against the decrees of the senate and the mandates of the emperors which
are opposed to "meetings" that we are sinning! The Holy Spirit, when He was
preaching in whatsoever lands He chose, and through whomsoever He chose,
was wont,  from foresight of the imminence either of temptations to befall
the Church, or of plagues to befall the world, in His character of
Paraclete (that is, Advocate for the purpose of winning over the judge by
prayers), to issue mandates for observances of this nature; for instance,
at the present time, with the view of practising the discipline of sobriety
and abstinence: we, who receive Him, must necessarily observe also the
appointments which He then made. Look at the Jewish calendar, and you will
find it nothing novel that all succeeding posterity guards with hereditary
scrupulousness the precepts given to the fathers. Besides, throughout the
provinces of Greece there are held in definite localities those councils
gathered out of the universal Churches, by whose means not only all the
deeper questions are handled for the common benefit, but the actual
representation of the whole Christian. name is celebrated with great
veneration. (And how worthy a thing is this, that, under the auspices of
faith, men should congregate from all quarters to Christ! "See, how good
and how enjoyable for brethren to dwell in unity!"(2) This psalm you know
not easily how to sing, except when you are supping with a goodly company!)
But those conclaves first, by the operations of Stations and fastings, know
what it is "to grieve with the grieving," and thus at last "to rejoice in
company with the rejoicing."(3) If we also, in our diverse provinces, (but)
present mutually in spirit,(4) observe those very solemnities, whose then
celebration our present discourse has been defending, that is the
sacramental law.

CHAP. XIV.--REPLY TO THE CHARGE OF "GALATICISM."

   Being, therefore, observers of "seasons" for these things, and of
"days, and months, and years,"(5) we Galaticize. Plainly we do, if we are
observers of Jewish ceremonies, of legal solemnities: for those the apostle
unteaches, suppressing the continuance of the Old Testament which has been
buried in Christ, and establishing that of the New. But if there is a new
creation in Christ,' our solemnities too will be bound to be new: else, if
the apostle has erased all devotion absolutely "of seasons, and days, and
months, and years," why do we celebrate the passover by an annual rotation
in the first month? Why in the fifty ensuing days do we spend our time in
all exultation? Why do we devote to Stations the fourth and sixth days of
the week, and to fasts the "preparation-day?"(2)  Anyhow, you sometimes
continue your Station even over the Sabbath,--a day never to be kept as a
fast except at the passover season, according to a reason elsewhere given.
With us, at all events, every day likewise is celebrated by an ordinary
consecration. And it will not, then, be, in the eyes of the apostle, the
differentiating principle--distinguishing (as he is doing) "things new and
old"(3)--which will be ridiculous; but (in this case too) it will be your
own unfairness, while you taunt us with the form of antiquity all the while
you are laying against us the charge of novelty.

CHAP. XV.--OF THE APOSTLE'S LANGUAGE CONCERNING FOOD.

   The apostle reprobates likewise such as "bid to abstain from meats; but
he does so from the foresight of the Holy Spirit, precondemning already the
heretics who would enjoin perpetual abstinence to the extent of destroying
and despising the works of the Creator; such as I may find in the person of
a Marcion, a Tatian, or a Jupiter, the Pythagorean heretic of to-day; not
in the person of the Paraclete. For how limited is the extent of our
"interdiction of meats!" Two weeks of xerophagies in the year (and not the
whole of these,--the Sabbaths, to wit, and the Lord's days, being excepted)
we offer to God; abstaining from things which we do not reject, but defer.
But further: when writing to the Romans, the apostle now gives you a home-
thrust, detractors as you are of this observance: "Do not for the sake of
food," he says, "undo(4) the work of God." What "work?" That about which he
says,(5) "It is good not to eat flesh, and not to drink wine:" "for he who
in these points doeth service, is pleasing and propitiable to our God."
"One believeth that all things may be eaten; but another, being weak,
feedeth on vegetables. Let not him who eateth lightly esteem him who eateth
not. Who art thou, who judgest another's servant?" "Both he who eateth, and
he who eateth not, giveth God thanks." But, since he forbids human choice
to be made matter of controversy, how much more Divine! Thus he knew how to
chide certain restricters and interdicters of food, such as abstained from
it of contempt, not of duty; but to approve such as did so to the honour,
not the insult, of the Creator. And if he has "delivered you the keys of
the meat-market," permitting the eating of "all things" with a view to
establishing the exception of" things offered to idols ;" still he has not
included the kingdom of God in the meat-market: "For," he says, "the
kingdom of God is neither meat nor drink;"(6) and, "Food commendeth us not
to God"--not that you may think this said about dry diet, but rather about
rich and carefully prepared, if, when he subjoins, "Neither, if we shall
have eaten, shall we abound; nor, if we shall not have eaten, shall we be
deficient," the ring of his words suits, (as it does), you rather (than
us), who think that you do "abound" if you eat, and are "deficient if you
eat not; and for this reason disparage these observances.

   How unworthy, also, is the way in which you interpret to the favour of
your own lust the fact that the Lord "ate and drank" promiscuously! But I
think that He must have likewise "fasted" inasmuch as He has pronounced,
not "the full;" but "the hungry and thirsty, blessed:"(7) (He) who was wont
to profess "food" to be, not that which His disciples had supposed, but
"the thorough doing of the Father's work;"(8) teaching "to labour for the
meat which is permanent unto life eternal;"(9) in our ordinary prayer
likewise commanding us to request "bread,"(10) not the wealth of
Attalus(11) therewithal. Thus, too, Isaiah has not denied that God "hath
chosen" a "fist;" but has particularized in detail the kind of fast which
He has not chosen: "for in the days," he says, "of your fasts your own
wills are found (indulged), and all who are subject to you ye stealthily
sting; or else ye fast with a view to abuse and strifes, and ye smite with
the fists. Not such a fast have I elected;"(12) but such an one as He has
subjoined, and by subjoining has not abolished, but confirmed.

CHAP. XVI.--INSTANCES FROM SCRIPTURE OF DIVINE JUDGMENTS UPON THE SELF-
INDULGENT; AND APPEALS TO THE PRACTICES OF HEATHENS.

   For even if He does prefer "the works of righteousness," still not
without a sacrifice, which is a soul afflicted with fasts.(1) He, at all
events, is the God to whom neither a People incontinent of appetite, nor a
priest, nor a prophet, was pleasing. To this day the "monuments of
concupiscence" remain, where the People, greedy of "flesh," till, by
devouring without digesting the quails, they brought on cholera, were
buried. Eli breaks his neck before the temple doors,(2) his sons fall in
battle, his daughter-in-law expires in child-birth:(3) for such was the
blow which had been deserved at the hand of God by the shameless house, the
defrauder of the fleshly sacrifices.(4) Sameas, a "man of God," after
prophesying the issue of the idolatry introduced by King Jeroboam--after
the drying up and immediate restoration of that king's hand--after the
rending in twain of the sacrificial altar,--being on account of these signs
invited (home) by the king by way of recompense, plainly declined (for he
had been prohibited by God) to touch food at all in that place; but having
presently afterwards rashly taken food from another old man, who lyingly
professed himself a prophet, he was deprived, in accordance with the word
of God then and there uttered over the table, of burial in his fathers'
sepulchres. For he was prostrated by the rushing of a lion upon him in the
way, and was buried among strangers; and thus paid the penalty of his
breach of fast.(5)

   These will be warnings both to people and to bishops, even spiritual
ones, in case they may ever have been guilty of incontinence of appetite.
Nay, even in Hades the admonition has not ceased to speak; where we find in
the person of the rich feaster, convivialities tortured; in that of the
pauper, fasts refreshed; having--(as convivialities and fasts alike had)--
as preceptors "Moses and the prophets."(6) For Joel withal exclaimed:
"Sanctify a fast, and a religious service;"(7) foreseeing even then that
other apostles and prophets would sanction fasts, and would preach
observances of special service to God. Whence it is that even they who
court their idols by dressing them, and by adorning them in their
sanctuary, and by saluting them at each particular hour, are said to do
them service. But, more than that, the heathens recognise every form of
tapeinophro'nhsis. When the heaven is rigid and the year arid, barefooted
processions are enjoined by public proclamation; the magistrates lay aside
their purple, reverse the fasces,  utter prayer, offer a victim. There are,
moreover, some colonies where, besides (these extraordinary solemnities,
the inhabitants), by an annual rite, clad in sackcloth and besprent with
ashes, present a suppliant importunity to their idols, (while) baths and
shops are kept shut till the ninth hour. They have one single fire in
public--on the altars; no water even in their platters. There is, I
believe, a Ninevitan suspension of business! A Jewish fast, at all events,
is universally celebrated; while, neglecting the temples, throughout all
the shore, in every open place, they continue long to send prayer up to
heaven. And, albeit by the dress and ornamentation of mourning they
disgrace the duty, still they do affect a faith in abstinence, and sigh for
the arrival of the long-lingering evening star to sanction (their feeding).
But it is enough for me that you, by heaping blasphemies upon our
xerophagies, put them on a level with the chastity of an Isis and a Cybele.
I admit the comparison in the way of evidence. Hence (our xerophagy) will
be proved divine, which the devil, the emulator of things divine, imitates.
It is out of truth that falsehood is built; out of religion that
superstition is compacted.  Hence you are more irreligious, in proportion
as a heathen is more conformable. He, in short, sacrifices his appetite to
an idol-god; you to (the true) God will not. For to you your belly is god,
and your lungs a temple, and your paunch a sacrificial altar, and your cook
the priest, and your fragrant smell the Holy Spirit, and your condiments
spiritual gifts, and your belching prophecy.

CHAP. XVII -- CONCLUSION.

   "Old" you are, if we will say the truth, you who are so indulgent to
appetite, and justly do you vaunt your "priority:" always do I recognise
the savour of Esau, the hunter of wild beasts: so unlimitedly studious are
you of catching fieldfares, so do you come from "the field" of your most
lax discipline, so faint are you in spirit.(8) If I offer you a paltry
lentile dyed red with must well boiled down, forthwith you will sell all
your "primacies:" with you "love" shows its fervour in sauce-pans, "faith"
its warmth in kitchens, "hope" its anchorage in waiters; but of greater
account is "love," because that is the means whereby your young men sleep
with their sisters! Appendages, as we all know, of appetite are
lasciviousness and voluptuousness. Which alliance the apostle withal was
aware of; and hence, after premising, "Not in drunkenness and revels," he
adjoined, "nor in couches and lusts."(9)

   To the indictment of your appetite pertains (the charge) that "double
honour" is with you assigned to your presiding (elders) by double shares
(of meat and drink); whereas the apostle has given them "double honour" as
being both brethren and officers.(1) Who, among you, is superior in
holiness, except him who is more frequent in banqueting, more sumptuous in
catering, more learned in cups? Men of soul and flesh alone as you are,
justly do you reject things spiritual. If the prophets were pleasing to
such, my (prophets) they were not. Why, then, do not you constantly preach,
"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die?"(2) just as we do not
hesitate manfully to command, "Let us fast, brethren and sisters, lest to-
morrow perchance we die." Openly let us vindicate our disciplines. Sure we
are that "they who are in the flesh cannot please God;"(3) not, of course,
those who are in the substance of the flesh, but in the care, the
uffection, the work, the will, of it. Emaciation displeases not us; for it
is not by weight that God bestows flesh, any more than He does "the Spirit
by measure."  (4) More easily, it may be, through the "strait gate"(5) of
salvation will slenderer flesh enter; more speedily will lighter flesh
rise; longer in the sepulchre will drier flesh retain its firmness. Let
Olympic cestus-players and boxers cram themselves to satiety. To them
bodily ambition is suitable to whom bodily strength is necessary; and yet
they also strengthen themselves by xerophagies. But ours are other thews
and other sinews, just as our contests withal are other; we whose
"wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the world's(6)
power, against the spiritualities of malice." Against these it is not by
robustness of flesh and blood, but of faith and spirit, that it behoves us
to make our antagonistic stand. On the other hand, an over-fed Christian
will be more necessary to bears and lions, perchance, than to God; only
that, even to encounter beasts, it will be his duty to practise emaciation.


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland beginning in
1867. (ANF 4, Roberts and Donaldson). The digital version is by The
Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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