gion, and becomes a duty, according as it is necessary or highly conducing to such ends, to the promoting of which we are bound to contribute all our skill and faculties. Fasting is principally operative to mortification of carnal appetites, to which feasting and full tables do minister aptness and power and inclinations. When I fed them to the full, then they committed adultery, and assembled by troops in the harlots' houses.' And if we observe all our own vanities, we shall find that upon every sudden joy, or a prosperous accident, or an opulent fortune, or a pampered body, and highly spirited and inflamed, we are apt to rashness, levities, inconsiderate expressions, scorn, and pride, idleness, wantonness, curiosity, niceness, and impatience. But fasting is one of those afflictions which reduces our body to want, our spirits to soberness, our condition to sufferance, our desires to abstinence and customs of denial; and so, by taking off the inundations of sensuality, leaves the enemies within in a condition of being easilier subdued. Fasting directly advances towards chastity; and by consequence and indirect powers to patience, and humility, and indifferency. But then it is not the fast of a day that can do this; it is not an act, but a state of fasting, that operates to mortification. A perpetual temperance and frequent abstinence may abate such proportions of strength and nutriment, as to procure a body mortified and lessened in desires. And thus St. Paul kept his body under, using severities to it for the taming its rebellions and distemperatures. And St. Jerome reports of St. Hilarion,' that when he had

1 Hieron. in Vita S. Hilarion.

fasted much, and used coarse diet, and found his lust too strong for such austerities, he resolved to increase it to the degree of mastery, lessening his diet and increasing his hardship, till he should rather think of food than wantonness. And many

times the fastings of some men are ineffectual, because they promise themselves cure too soon, or make too gentle applications, or put less proportions into their antidotes. I have read of a maiden, that, seeing a young man much transported with her love, and that he ceased not to importune her with all the violent pursuits that passion could suggest, told him, she had made a vow to fast forty days with bread and water, of which she must discharge herself, before she could think of corresponding to any other desire; and desired of him, as a testimony of his love, that he also would be a party in the same vow. The young man undertook it, that he might give probation of his love; but because he had been used to a delicate and nice kind of life, in twenty days he was so weakened that he thought more of death than love; and so got a cure for his intemperance, and was wittily cozened into remedy. But St. Jerome's counsel in this question is most reasonable, not allowing violent and long fasts, and then returns to an ordinary course; for these are too great changes of diet to consist with health, and too sudden and transient to obtain a permanent and natural effect: but " a belly always hungry,"1 a table never full, a meal little and necessary, no extravagance, no freer repast, this is a state of fasting which will be found to be of best avail to suppress pungent lusts and rebellious de

Parcus cibus, et venter semper esuriens triduana jejunia superant. S. Hieron. ep. 8. ad Demetriad.

sires. And it were well to help this exercise with the assistances of such austerities which teach patience, and ingenerate a passive fortitude, and accustom us to a despite of pleasures, and which are consistent with our health: for if fasting be left to do the work alone, it may chance either to spoil the body or not to spoil the lust. Hard lodging, uneasy garments, laborious postures of prayer, journeys on foot, sufferance of cold, paring away the use of ordinary solaces, denying every pleasant appetite, rejecting the most pleasant morsels; these are in the rank of bodily exercises, which though (as St. Paul says) of themselves they profit little,' yet they accustom us to acts of self-denial in exterior instances, and are not useless to the designs of mortifying carnal and sensual lusts. They have ' a proportion of wisdom' with these cautions; viz. in will-worship; that is, in voluntary susception, when they are not imposed as necessary religion: in humility; that is, without contempt of others that use them not in neglecting of the body; that is, when they are done for discipline and mortification, that the flesh by such handlings and rough usages become less satisfied and more despised.

1

3. As fasting hath respect to the future, so also to the present; and so it operates in giving assistance to prayer. There is a kind of devil that is not to be ejected but by prayer and fasting; that is, prayer elevated and made intense by a defecate and pure spirit, not laden with the burden of meat and vapours. St. Basil affirms, that there are certain

1 Colos. ii. 23. Λόγον σοφίας.

· Εἴ τις ἐπίσκοπος, &c. γάμε, και κρεῶν, καὶ οἶνε ἐ δί ἄσκησιν, ἀλλὰ διὰ βδελυρίαν ἀπέχεται, ἢ διορθέσθω, ἢ καθαιρείσθω. Can. Apost. 50.

angels deputed by God to minister, and to describe all such in every church who mortify themselves by fasting;' as if paleness and a meagre visage were that mark in the forehead which the angel observed, when he signed the saints in Jerusalem to escape the judgment. Prayer is the wings of the soul, and fasting is the wings of prayer.' Tertullian calls it, the nourishment of prayer. But this is a discourse of Christian philosophy; and he that chooses to do any act of spirit, or understanding, or attention after a full meal, will then perceive that abstinence had been the better disposition to any intellectual and spiritual action. And therefore the church of God ever joined fasting to their more solemn offices of prayer. The apostles fasted and prayed 'when they laid hands,' and invocated the Holy Ghost upon Saul and Barnabas.* And these also,' when they had prayed with fasting, ordained elders in the churches of Lystra and Iconium.' And the vigils of every holiday tell us, that the devotion of the festival is promoted by the fast of the vigils.

4. But when fasting relates to what is past, it becomes an instrument of repentance, it is a punitive and an afflictive action, an effect of godly sorrow, a testimony of contrition, a judging of ourselves,' and chastening our bodies, that we be not

Serm. v. de Jejun.

2 Jejunium animæ nostræ alimentum, leves ei pennas produS. Bern. Serm. in Vigil. S. Andreæ.

cens.

̓Ακρίδας ἐσθίοντα Ἰωάννην, και πτεροφυήσαντα τὴν ψυχὴν. dixit S. Chrysost.

3 Jejuniis preces alere, lacrymari, et mugire noctes diéscue ad Dominum. Tertull.

Acts, xiii. 3.

5 Ibid. xiv. 23.

ance.

judged of the Lord." The fast of the Ninevites, and the fast the prophet Joel calls for, and the discipline of the Jews in the rites of expiation, proclaim this usefulness of fasting in order to repentAnd indeed it were a strange repentance that had no sorrow in it, and a stranger sorrow that had no affliction; but it were the strangest scene of affliction in the world, when the sad and afflicted person shall eat freely, and delight himself, and to the banquets of a full table serve up the chalice of tears and sorrow, and no bread of affliction. Certainly he that makes much of himself, hath no great indignation against the sinner, when himself is the man. And it is but a gentle revenge and an easy judgment, when the sad sinner shall do penance in good meals, and expiate his sin with sensual satisfaction. So that fasting relates to religion in all variety and difference of time: it is an antidote against the poison of sensual temptations, an advantage to prayer, and an instrument of extinguishing the guilt and the affections of sin, by judging ourselves, and representing in a judicatory of our own, even ourselves being judges, that sin deserves condemnation, and the sinner merits a high calamity. Which excellencies I repeat in the words of Baruch the scribe, he that was amanuensis to the prophet Jeremiah: The soul that is greatly vexed, which goeth stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul, will give thee praise and righteousness, O Lord.'

5. But now as fasting hath divers ends, so also it hath divers laws. If fasting be intended as an instrument of prayer, it is sufficient that it be of that

* Μετάνοια χωρὶς νησείας ἀργή. S. Basil. Joel, ii. 15 ; Levit. xxiii. 27, &c.; Isai. xxii. 12.