Tertullian
on Fasting (against the Montanists)
Book
VIII
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
Written in 200 AD
Chapter 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 (Montanists) 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 (Male and female sex organs) 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 (raw earthly) faith by its care of the flesh (of which
it wholly consists)-as prone to manifold feeding as to manifold
marrying-so that it (These fleshly
desires) 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; (Holy Spirit) it is on this account (Fasting
and Marriage) that the New Prophecies are rejected: not that
Montanus and Priscilla and Maximilla preach another God, nor
that they disjoin Jesus Christ (from God) (They
preached a oneness of the Father), nor that they overturn
any particular rule of faith or hope, but
that they plainly teach more frequent fasting than marrying.
(This charge mystifies me Frequent fasting as
a major Heresy)
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
(Liiterally: dry- diet – later in the
medieval practice of Lent it was the obstention of all meat
– except fish all gravies, and
all dairy products) likewise, keeping our food
unmoistened by any flesh (meat) , and by any juiciness (gravies), 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.
(This leads
to questions concerning the practices of the Catholics of eating
fish on Fridays and the practices of Lent. Where it seems what
Tertullian is complaining of has been integrated into the Church.)
Rules of Fasting for Great Lent
(as
listed in The Lenten Triodion edited by Bishop Kallistos
Ware, pp. 35 – 37 |
1. Not only types of food, but the number of
meals in a day becomes important as experience in fasting
progresses. Therefore, during the Great Fast of Lent types
of food and number of meals and when
they are taken are limited. However, the quantity or amount
eaten of foods allowed is not generally limited, although
gluttony is to be avoided.
2. From the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee
to the Sunday of the Prodigal, all fasting (even Wednesday
and Friday) is prohibited.
This reminds us that we should not fast, as the
Pharisee, for appearances’ sake.
3. From Sunday of the
Prodigal to Sunday of Meat Fare, no special rules, but
fasting on Wednesday and Friday.
4. The week before Lent, meat is forbidden (even
Saturday), but eggs, cheese and all dairy may be eaten
every day.
5. On weekdays of the FIRST WEEK of Great Lent,
a total of two (2) meals are eaten in five (5) days, one
on Wednesday and the other on Friday in the evening.
If possible, only water or juices are taken on
the other days, although bread is permissible.
However, no cooked meals beyond the two mentioned,
and at these xerophagia (literally, dry
eating) is practiced.
Xerophagia
is defined as follows:
a. Prohibition of all meat,
poultry, fish (with backbones) and all animal products
(dairy, eggs, lard, drippings- animal fat).
b. Prohibition of oil (theoretically
all oil, but specifically olive oil) and wine and other
alcoholic beverages
c. Shellfish (octopus, squid,
clams, scallops, shrimp, lobster, etc.) are allowed, as
are all fruits, vegetables, tubers, nuts, breads and cereals.
6. On weekdays of the 2nd, 3rd,
4th, 5th and 6th weeks,
one meal a day is prescribed to be had in the evening
after Vespers, and xerophagia is mandated.
7. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy
Week, one meal a day (xerophagia) after Vespers is permissible,
but complete abstinence (except for water is preferred
or at least for the meal to be uncooked.
8. Thursday of Holy Week: one meal in the evening,
but wine and oil are permitted.
9. Friday of Holy Week: bread with water or juice
may be taken after Vespers if necessary.
10. Saturday of Holy Week: the strictest fast of the year and
the only Saturday of the year when oil is not permitted. In principle, no meal, but a cup of wine
with dried fruit in the afternoon is permissible in light
of the all-night vigil of Pascha.
With Pascha comes the complete end of the Fast.
11.On Saturdays and Sundays of Great Lent, 2 meals each day,
at noon and in the evening.
Wine and oil are permitted, but no meats, poultry,
fish (with backbones) or any animal products are permitted.
12. On the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25)
and Palm Sunday, fish (with backbone), wine and oil are
allowed, but no other animal products.
The types of food
we like or dislike – the way we eat – is not always healthy
for us. “You are what you eat-“ there is truth to
that statement. Biologists
know that different chemicals in the foods we eat affect
us physically and also psychologically.
This is an important, but often forgotten, aspect
of the Fast of the Church.
Fasting, as practiced
for millennia by a number of religious faiths, has been
known to be beneficial by human beings from virtually
every culture. The unique experience of the Orthodox Christian
fast is the “spiritual” aspect:
the fast that cleanses both the body and the soul,
restoring the balance intended by God.
Fasting is not some old-fashioned or old world
custom. It is
part of the Holy Tradition of the Church because it is
good for us and is a means – when exercised properly –
of attaining spiritual health.
That’s the fact.
First, prayer – conversation
with God. Second,
repentance – self-examination, confession and personal
correction before God.
Third, fasting –refraining from sin and complacency
in our body and soul.
Then you are ready to receive the Lord, especially
in Holy Communion, which is specifically offered to us
more often during Great Lent.
Taste and see that the Lord is good.
That is the spirit of Great Lent! |
Chapter 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."4
At all events, in the Gospel they think (The
Montanists) that those days were definitely (Foreshadowings)
appointed for fasts in which "the Bridegroom
was taken away; " 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." Accordingly,
(they think) that, with regard to the future, fasting was
to be indifferently observed, by the New Discipline, of choice,
not of command, (It would seem
so in the NT) 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. (Tertullian
is saying that this prayer practice faded out in the early church)
Xerophagies, (Literally dry fasting) however, (they consider) the
novel name (Which they apparently made
up) 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, (Montanus was teaching
that fasting in the NT was a cleansing – and there is an argument
for that but not in regards to specific diet or abstention from
specific foods.)
By a restriction laid
upon certain kinds of food; whereas faith, free in Christ,7
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-market8
-(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.9
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 (seared) with doctrines
of liars."10
(Inburnt?) With what fires, prithee (I
Pray thee)? 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."11
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:12 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; "13
while Himself withal was wont to eat and drink till He made
Himself noted thus; "Behold, a gormandizer (A
greedy voracious eater) and a drinker: "14
(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."15
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;16
I must love God, and my neighbour as myself:17
for `on these two precepts the whole Law hangeth, and the prophets,
'not on the emptiness of my lungs and intestines." – (Paul
the apostle spoke of fastings oft -- Tertullian is minimizing
this)
Chapter 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.18
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" (of Marriage)19 (This is VERY
troubling that this is listed as a fast – Adam was freely eating
and drinking of all that was in the garden – with the abstention
of one tree – the abstention of that tree of sin did not make
Adam prophesy in ecstasy – scripture says God put his spirit
upon the Man.)
with reference to
Christ and the Church, and no longer being "capable of
the things which were the Spirit's,"20
yielded more readily to his belly than to God, heeded the meat
rather than the mandate, and sold salvation for his gullet!
(This not at all how Adam Fell Tertullian
is surmising with Adam the issue was not fasting for spirituality)
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 recognize
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 perceptive 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 soul21
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)?
Chapter 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.'22
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.'23
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."24
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; "25
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 license.
Chapter 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"26
of God, they were seen to be its lord, destined to the "land
flowing with milk and honey;27
but forthwith, stumbled at the surrounding spectacle of an in
copious 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? "28
From the self-same belly preference were they destined (at last)
to deplore29
(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?
here 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!"30
Thus used they, too, (like the Psychics), to find the angelic
bread31
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.
Chapter 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."32
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."33
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."34
To the corrupting power of riches He made the enormity of edacity
antecedent, for which riches themselves are the procuring agents.35
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"36
obstructed by the "fats" of which He had expressly
forbidden the eating,37
teaching man not to be studious of the stomach.38
On the other hand,
he whose "heart" was habitually found "lifted
up"39
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),40
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!41
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.42
For Elijah withal had, by this fact primarily, that he had imprecated
a famine,43
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."44
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!45
"What (doest) thou, Elijah, here? "46
Much more friendly was this voice than, "Adam, where art
thou? "47
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-fellow48
with man-peer, in truth, with peer! For if the eternal God will
not hunger, as He testifies through Isaiah,49
this will be the time for man to be made equal with God, when
he lives without food.
Chapter 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,
1
Samuel 7:5-7 Then Samuel said, "Assemble all Israel at Mizpah and I will intercede
with the LORD for you." 6 When they had assembled
at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the LORD.
On that day they fasted and there they confessed, "We have
sinned against the LORD." And Samuel was leader
[a]
of Israel at Mizpah.
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."50
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.51
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.52
Sodom also, and Gomorrah, would have escaped if they had fasted.53
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.54
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.55
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"56
-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.57
Chapter 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,58
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;59
having (the power) to make "loaves out of stones,"60
say, to make Jordan flow with wine perchance, if He had been
such a "glutton and toper."61
Nay, rather, by the virtue of contemning food He was initiating
"the new man" into "a severe handling" of
"the old,"62
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:
"63
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:64
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,65
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"66
Chapter 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.67
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."68
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,"69
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?70
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.71
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: "72
for such was her condition withal when praying to God.73
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."74
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 Israel: "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"75
-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,"76
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.
Chapter 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;77
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;78
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 pray79
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 corroborative fact of Daniel praying thrice in the day;80
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."81
Accordingly, setting out of the question the confirmer of all
such things, the Paraclete, the guide of universal truth,82
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.83
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? "84
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?85
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:86
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."87
This will be a "late" Station which, fasting until
the evening, sacrifices a fatter (victim of) prayer to God!88
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"89
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.90
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.
Chapter 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"91
-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; "92
enjoining every species of of tapeino/fronhsij,
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?
Chapter 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,93
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 tapeinofro/nhsij
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!"94
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."95
If we also, in our diverse provinces, (but) present mutually
in spirit,96
observe those very solemnities, whose then celebration our present
discourse has been defending, that is the sacramental law.
Chapter XIV.-Reply to the Charge of "Galaticism."
Being, therefore,
observers of "seasons" for these things, and of "days,
and months, and years,"97
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,98
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?
"99
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"100
-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.
Chapter 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, "undo101
the work of God." What "work? "That about which
he says,102
"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; "103
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: "104
(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; "105
teaching "to labour for the meat which is permanent unto
life eternal; "106
in our ordinary prayer likewise commanding us to request "bread,"107
not the wealth of Attalus108
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;
"109
but such an one as He has subjoined, and by subjoining has not
abolished, but confirmed.
Chapter 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.110
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,111
his sons fall in battle, his daughter-in-law expires in child-birth:112
for such was the blow which had been deserved at the hand of
God by the shameless house, the defrauder of the fleshly sacrifices.113
Same as, 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.114
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."115
For Joel withal exclaimed: "Sanctify a fast, and a religious
service; "116
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 tapeinofro/nhsij. 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.
Chapter 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.117
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."118
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.119
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?
"120
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; "121
not, of course, those who are in the substance of the
flesh, but in the care, the affection, 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."122
More easily, it may be, through the "strait gate"123
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's124
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.