On Fasting

For as regards fasting, they set against us certain days established by God, as when in Leviticus the Lord commands Moses concerning the tenth day of the seventh month of atonement: Holy, he says, shall that day be for you, and you shall afflict your souls; and every soul that shall not have been afflicted on that day shall be cut off from its people. Certainly in the Gospel they consider those days to be the ones determined for fasting, in which the bridegroom was taken away, and they hold these to be now the only lawful fasts of Christians, the legal and prophetic antiquities having been abolished.

For where it suits them, they grow sour over what the law and the prophets mean up to John. And so henceforth fasting is to be observed indifferently at one's own discretion, not by the command of a new discipline, according to the times and circumstances of each individual; and so the Apostles observed it, imposing no other yoke of fixed fasts to be undertaken in common by all; likewise neither of stations, which themselves also had their own days—the fourth and sixth ferias—yet they run passively, neither under the law of a precept, nor beyond the last hour of the day, since even prayers are generally concluded at the ninth hour after the example of Peter, as is recorded in the Acts; and xerophagies are a new name for an affected observance, and closely akin to pagan superstition; such as the purities with which worshippers of Apis, Isis, and the Great Mother sanctify themselves by the exclusion of certain foods.—since faith, free in Christ, owes not even to the Jewish law abstinence from certain foods, having been once for all admitted by the Apostle into the shambles, who detests those who, just as they forbid marriage, so also command to abstain from foods created by God: and therefore that we were even then foremarked in the last times as those who depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits of the world, to doctrines of liars, having their conscience seared.

With what fires, I ask you? I believe with those by which we frequently conduct wedding feasts and cook dinners daily. So also they say we are smitten along with the Galatians, as observers of days, and months, and years. They also hurl at us that Isaiah declared: The Lord has not chosen such a fast; that is, not abstinence from food, but the works of justice which he subjoins; and that the Lord himself in the Gospel answered with a brief reply to all scrupulosity concerning diet, that a man is not defiled by those things which enter into the mouth, but by those which proceed out of the mouth, since he himself also ate and drank to the point of being noted: Behold a man gluttonous and a winebibber; and so also the Apostle teaches that food does not commend us to God, neither if we abound when we eat, nor if we are lacking when we do not eat.

By these and similar arguments they now subtly press toward this end, that each person who is more inclined toward the belly may be able to regard as superfluous, and not so very necessary, the duties of food withheld or diminished or delayed, God preferring, of course, the works of justice and innocence. And we know what kind of thing the persuasions of carnal conveniences are; when it is easily said: What is needed is that with my whole heart I believe and love God and my neighbor; for on these two commandments hang the whole Law and the prophets, not on the emptiness of my lungs and intestines.

Therefore we ought first to affirm this, which is in danger of being secretly undermined: how much that emptiness avails with God, and above all, from what source the very rationale of meriting God in this manner has proceeded; for then the necessity of the observance will be recognized, when the authority of the rationale, to be reviewed from the beginning, shall have shone forth. Adam had received from God the law not to taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, destined to die if he tasted. But he himself, having then reverted to the psychic state after the spiritual ecstasy in which he had prophesied that great mystery concerning Christ and the Church, and no longer capable of receiving the things that were of the Spirit, yielded more easily to the belly than to God, assented to food rather than to the precept; he sold his salvation for his gullet.

He ate, in short, and perished: who would otherwise have been safe, had he preferred to fast from that one little tree; so that from this point the animal faith may recognize its own seed, deriving thence the appetite for carnal things and the rejection of spiritual things.

I hold, therefore, that gluttony is a murderer from the beginning, to be punished with torments and penalties on the day of judgment, even if God had prescribed no fasts; yet by showing from what source Adam was slain, he had left me to understand the remedies for the offense, who had demonstrated the offense: I would of my own accord have reckoned food, in whatever ways and at whatever times I could, as poison, and would have taken hunger as the antidote, through which I might purge the cause of death from the beginning, transmitted into me also along with the race itself, being certain that God wills this, whose contrary he did not will, and sufficiently confident that the care of continence would be pleasing to him, by whom I had found the guilt of incontinence condemned.

Furthermore, since he himself also commands fasting, and calls the soul crushed—properly, of course, by the straits of food—a sacrifice, who will now doubt that this has been the rationale of all mortifications regarding diet, by which, through the renewed interdiction of food and the observance of the precept, the primordial sin might be expiated; so that man might make satisfaction to God through the same material cause by which he had offended, that is, through the interdiction of food; and might thus rekindle salvation in a rival manner by fasting, as he had extinguished it by feasting, despising many lawful things in place of the one unlawful thing.

This rationale was preserved in the Providence of God, who regulates all things according to their times, lest anyone, arguing from the contrary side to cast down our proposition, should say: Why then did God not immediately establish some chastisement of diet, but rather even increased the permission? For in the beginning he had assigned to man only herbage and the food of trees: Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed that is upon the earth; and every tree which has in itself the fruit of seed-bearing seed shall be for food for you.

But afterward, to Noah, with the enumeration of the subjection of all the beasts of the earth, and the birds of the sky, and the things moving on the earth, and the fish of the sea, and every living thing: They shall be, he says, for food for you, as the green herb I have given you all things; but flesh in the blood of its soul you shall not eat—for even by this very fact, that he exempts from eating only that flesh whose soul is not poured out through blood, it is manifest that he has granted the use of all other flesh. To this we reply that it was not fitting to burden man with any law of abstinence as yet, since he had just barely been unable to endure so light a prohibition, namely that of a single fruit; and so he was released, to be strengthened by that very liberty.

Likewise after the flood, in the reformation of the human race, it sufficed for the time being to have one law of abstaining from blood, with the use of other things permitted. For the Lord had already shown judgment through the flood; he had also further threatened through the requiring of blood from the hand of a brother and from the hand of a beast. Therefore, administering all justice of judgment, he sent forth the material of liberty, preparing discipline through indulgence; permitting all things, in order to take away something; about to exact more, if more had been committed; about to command abstinence, having first granted indulgence; so that, as we have said, the primordial sin might be expiated all the more by the exercise of greater abstinence, on the occasion of greater license.

Finally, when a people familiar to God began to be chosen, and the restoration of man could be imbued with instruction, then all laws and disciplines were imposed, including those which curtailed diet, with certain things taken away as unclean, so that man might more easily at some point endure fasts, having been accustomed to perpetual abstinence in certain things. For the first people had re-engraved the sin of the first man, being found more inclined to the belly than to God; when, rescued from the hardship of Egyptian servitude by the mighty hand and uplifted arm of God, their Lord was seen; and destined for a land flowing broadly with milk and honey; yet immediately scandalized by the prospect of the abundant wilderness, sighing for the losses of Egyptian satiety, they murmured against Moses and Aaron: Would that we had died struck by the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat over the pots of flesh, and ate bread in abundance!

How have you led us out into these deserts to kill this whole assembly with hunger? By the same preference of the belly they were about to deplore those same leaders and arbiters of God, whom they were provoking by the desire for flesh and the recollection of Egyptian abundance: Who will feed us with flesh? There came to our minds the fish which we ate in Egypt freely, and the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and other things. But now our soul is dry, our eyes see nothing but manna. So even to them the angelic bread of xerophagies was displeasing: they preferred the fragrance of garlic and onion to that of heaven. And therefore from such ungrateful people the more pleasing and more savory things were taken away, both to punish gluttony and to exercise continence, so that the former might be condemned and the latter instructed.

Now if we have rashly recalled to the experiments of first beginnings the reasons both for a diet chastened by God and for one to be chastened by us on account of God, let us consult our common conscience; nature itself will declare what manner of men it has been accustomed to show us, before food and drink, while the saliva is still virgin, at least for the performance of those matters of sense in which divine things are handled—how much more powerful in mind, how much more lively in heart, than when that whole dwelling-place of the inner man, crammed with meats, flooded with wines, seething as it digests what will soon be dung, becomes a preparatory chamber for the latrines, in which plainly nothing remains so close at hand as to savour of wantonness. The people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. Understand the modesty of holy Scripture: it would not have marked out play unless it were shameless play.

Moreover, how few will be mindful of religion when the seats of memory are occupied and the members of wisdom are impeded? No one will remember God as is fitting, as is right, as is profitable, in that time in which it is customary for a man to forget even himself. Every discipline of diet either kills or wounds. I lie, if the Lord himself, reproaching Israel for forgetting him, does not lay the cause to fullness: The beloved waxed fat, and was made thick, and was enlarged, and forsook God who made him, and departed from the Lord his saviour. And again in the same Deuteronomy, commanding that the same cause be guarded against: Lest, he says, when thou hast eaten and drunk, and hast built goodly houses, and thy flocks and herds are multiplied, and thy silver and gold, thy heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God. He set the enormity of gluttony before the corruption of riches, which riches themselves procure.

Through these, of course, the heart of the people had been made fat, so that they should not see with their eyes, nor hear with their ears, nor perceive with the heart blocked up with fat—fat which he took away from eating by name, teaching man not to be devoted to stuffing himself. But he whose heart was found upright rather than fattened, sustained a fast of forty days and as many nights beyond the capacity of human nature, spiritual faith supplying the strength; and he saw with his eyes the glory of God, and heard with his ears the voice of God, and perceived with his heart the law of God, who was even then teaching that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God; while indeed the fatter people could not steadfastly behold even Moses himself fed by God, and his hunger satisfied in God's name. Rightly therefore the Lord showed himself also in the flesh to him as a companion of his fasts, and no less to Elijah.

For Elijah too, by the very first act of having prayed for famine, had already pledged himself sufficiently to fasting: As the Lord liveth, he said, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years. Then, fleeing from the threatening Jezebel, after the single food and drink which he had found when roused by the angel, he too, with empty belly and dry mouth for forty days and nights, came to the mountain Horeb; where, when he had lodged in a cave, with what familiar intercourse was he received by God! What doest thou here, Elijah?—a far more friendly voice than, Adam, where art thou. For that voice threatened a man who had eaten; this one spoke gently to one who was fasting. So great is the prerogative of a restricted diet, that it renders God a companion to man—truly an equal to an equal.

For if the eternal God shall not hunger, as he testifies through Isaiah, this will be the time when man is made equal to God, when he lives without food.

We have now proceeded to examples, so that we may review the powers of this duty through the efficacy of its benefits—a duty which even reconciles an angry God to man. Israel had sinned, gathered by Samuel at the watering-place at Mizpah, but so immediately washed away the sin by fasting that it likewise escaped the danger of battle. While Samuel was offering the burnt offering, we hear that God's clemency was procured by nothing more than the abstinence of the people. And the Philistines were advancing to battle: then at last the Lord thundered with a great voice upon the Philistines, and they were confounded, and fell before Israel; and the men of Israel went out from Mizpah, and pursued the Philistines, and they fell as far as Bethcar—the fed slain by the unfed, the armed by the unarmed. Such will be the strength of those who fast unto God: heaven fights for such soldiers. Thou hast here the pattern of a protection necessary also for spiritual wars.

Likewise, when Sennacherib king of the Assyrians, having already taken many cities, was directing blasphemies and threats against Israel through Rabshakeh, nothing else turned him from his purpose toward Ethiopia. Then, what else but the humiliation of king Hezekiah consumed a hundred and eighty thousand of his army through an angel? For when the stubbornness of the enemy was announced, he rent his garment, put on sackcloth, and in the same attire commanded the elders of the priests to approach God through Isaiah, with fasting of course accompanying their prayers: for there is no time for food in danger, nor is the practice of satiety fitting in sackcloth. Fasting is always the companion of grief, just as feasting is the accompaniment of joy. Through this companion of grief and fasting, even that sinful city, Nineveh, is delivered from the destruction that had been proclaimed. For penitence for its crimes had sufficiently commended its fasting to God, having lasted three days, with even the cattle afflicted, against whom God was not angry.

Sodom and Gomorrah too would have escaped, had they fasted. Ahab also acknowledges this remedy, when after his transgression and idolatry and the slaying of Naboth—killed by Jezebel on account of the vineyard—Elijah had reproached him: As thou hast killed, and also taken possession? In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, dogs shall lick thy blood also. He humbled himself, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth; and then the word of the Lord came to Elijah: Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me? Because he humbleth himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but in his son's days will I bring it, who was not going to fast. Thus fasting is a work of reverence toward God. Through it also Anna, the wife of Elkanah, who had previously been barren, easily obtained from God the filling of her womb, empty of food, with a son—and indeed a prophet.

But fasting will merit from God not only a change of nature, or the averting of dangers, or the blotting out of sins; but also the knowledge of mysteries. Behold the example of Daniel: concerning the dream of the king of Babylon all the wise men are troubled, they freely declare that it cannot be known by human excellence; Daniel alone, trusting in God and knowing what would avail to win God's favour, requests a space of three days, fasts with his brotherhood, and so, with prayers commended, is instructed through and through in the order and meaning of the dream; the tyrant's wise men are spared, God is glorified, Daniel is honoured—destined to obtain no less of God's favour afterwards also, in the first year of king Darius, when from reflection upon the times foretold by Jeremiah, he set his face toward God in fastings and sackcloth and ashes.

For even the angel sent to him straightway declared this to be the cause of the divine condescension: I am come, he said, to show thee how pitiable thou art—by fasting, that is. If he was pitiable to God, he had been terrible to the lions in the den; where indeed an angel procured a meal for him as he fasted six days.

We render also the remaining examples, for we are now hastening on to new testimonies: at the threshold of the Gospel, Anna the prophetess daughter of Phanuel, who both recognized the infant Lord and prophesied many things concerning him to those who were awaiting the redemption of Israel, after the distinguished title of her old widowhood as a woman married but once, is further adorned with the testimony of fastings, showing in what duties the Church ought to be assiduous, and that Christ is understood by none more than by those married but once and fasting often. The Lord himself presently dedicated his baptism, and in his own person that of all, with fastings, having the power to make bread from stones, and perhaps to make the Jordan flow with wine, if he had been such a glutton and drunkard.

Nay rather, he was initiating the new man, to the reproach of the old, with the virtue of disdaining food, so that when the devil sought to tempt him again through food, he might find him stronger for all his hunger. He thereafter laid down the law for fasts to be observed without sadness. For why should that which is salutary be sad? It was also fitting that against more stubborn demons fasting should be employed. For what wonder is it if the unclean spirit is driven out by the same operation by which the Holy Spirit is brought in? Finally, as the grace of the Holy Spirit with the additional gift of prophecy had hastened to come upon the centurion Cornelius, not yet baptized, we read that his fastings were heard. Moreover, I think that the Apostle also in the second letter to the Corinthians, among his labours and dangers and hardships, after hunger and thirst, enumerates also many fastings.

This principal form of the chastening of diet can now also give a ruling concerning the lesser practices of abstinence, as being themselves useful or necessary in their degree. For the exclusion of certain foods is a partial fast. Let us therefore examine also the novelty or vanity of xerophagies—whether in these too there is not a practice of religion both most ancient and most efficacious. I return to Daniel and his companions, who preferred a diet of vegetables and a drink of water to the royal dishes and wine-vessels, and were thereby made more comely—lest anyone fear even on account of the appearance of the body; and moreover adorned in spirit. For God gave the young men knowledge and understanding in all literature, and to Daniel in all speech, and in dreams, and in all wisdom—by which he also knew this very thing: by what means the knowledge of mysteries is to be obtained from God.

Finally, in the third year of Cyrus king of the Persians, when he had fallen into reflection upon a vision, he looked for another form of humiliation. In those days, he says, I Daniel was mourning for three weeks; I ate no pleasant bread, flesh and wine entered not into my mouth, I anointed myself with no oil, until three weeks were completed; after which an angel was sent to address him thus: Daniel, thou art a man greatly beloved; fear not, for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to humble thyself before God, thy word was heard, and I am come for thy word's sake.

Thus the pitiableness and humiliation of xerophagies drive away fear, and turn the ears of God toward us, and make us partakers of hidden things. I return also to Elijah: when ravens had been accustomed to satisfy him with bread and flesh, why did that certain one—an angel beyond doubt—afterwards at Beersheba of Judah, when he had roused him from sleep, offer him bread alone and water? Had the ravens failed who had fed him more liberally? Or would it have been difficult for an angel to snatch some servant from some royal banquet somewhere, laden with a most sumptuous dish, and convey him to Elijah—as a meal was brought to Daniel in the den of lions when he was hungry, from those who were reaping? But it was necessary to establish an example teaching that in a time of pressure, and of persecution, and of whatever circumstance, one must live on xerophagies.

With such fare David expressed his confession, eating ashes as it were for bread—that is, bread as dry and vile as ashes—and mingling his drink with weeping, in place of wine, of course. For abstinence from wine also has its own titles: it had consecrated Samuel to God, and had set Aaron apart. For of Samuel his mother says: He shall drink neither wine nor strong drink—for she herself also was praying to God in such fashion. And the Lord said to Aaron: Wine and strong drink shall ye not drink, thou and thy sons after thee, whenever ye enter the tabernacle or go up to the altar, lest ye die. So surely will those die who have ministered in the Church without sobriety. Thus also he reproaches Israel in the same vein: And ye gave my consecrated ones wine to drink. This restriction of drink is also a portion of xerophagy.

Although where abstinence from wine is either required by God or vowed by man, there is to be understood also a restriction of food laying down a rule for drink. For as is the eating, so is the drinking. It is not credible that a man should sacrifice half his gullet to God—sober in water, yet drunk in food. But whether the Apostle also knew xerophagies—he who had celebrated greater things: thirst and hunger and many fastings, who had refused drunkenness and revelling—the case of his disciple Timothy is argument enough: advising him to use a little wine on account of his stomach and frequent infirmities, from which he abstained not by rule but by devotion (for otherwise habit would have profited the stomach more), by this very act he commended abstinence from wine as worthy of God, which he dissuaded from necessity.

Likewise they find fault with our stations as unworthy, and indeed with some as appointed too late in the day, calling them novelties, and saying that this duty too is to be performed at one's own discretion, and not to be prolonged beyond the ninth hour, following their own custom of course. But as for what pertains to the question of prohibition, I shall answer once for all the causes. Now, to the proper point of this particular matter, I speak of the measure of time, and I say we must first remonstrate with them on this: from what source do they prescribe this rule for ending stations? If it is because Peter and those with him are read to have entered the temple at the ninth hour for prayer, who will prove to me that they performed a station on that day, so that the ninth hour is to be interpreted as the close and conclusion of the station?

Indeed, you would more easily find that Peter, at the sixth hour, had gone up into the upper room to pray before taking food, so that the sixth hour of the day might rather be the end of this duty, which seemed about to be completed after prayer. Furthermore, since in the same commentary of Luke both the third hour of prayer is shown, under which those initiated by the Holy Spirit were taken for drunkards, and the sixth, at which Peter went up into the upper room, and the ninth, at which they entered the temple, why should we not understand—while plainly preserving the indifference of praying always and everywhere and at all times—that nevertheless these three hours, as more notable in human affairs, which divide the day, which distinguish business, which resound publicly, were likewise more solemn in divine prayers?

This is also suggested by the example of Daniel praying three times a day, certainly by the selection of certain hours, and none other than the more notable ones, thereafter the Apostolic ones: the third, sixth, and ninth. Hence I shall say that Peter also observed the ninth hour from the older custom, praying a third time with the duty of the final prayer. But these things are said on account of those who think they act according to the pattern of Peter, which they do not know; not as though we reject the ninth hour, which we also observe on the fourth day of the week and very often on the sixth: but because of those things which are observed by tradition, we ought all the more to furnish a worthy reason for them, inasmuch as they lack the authority of Scripture, until they are either confirmed or corrected by some heavenly charism. And if ye are ignorant of anything, the Lord, he says, will reveal it to you.

And so, setting aside the Paraclete, the confirmer of all these things, the guide of all truth, I inquire whether a less worthy reason is brought forward among you for a new manner of observing, so that even to Peter that reason must be assigned, if he then performed a station. For it proceeds from the departure of the Lord, which, though it ought always to be commemorated without distinction of hours, yet we are then more earnestly devoted to it according to the very word station: for soldiers too, never unmindful of their oath, are more obedient at their stations. Therefore the affliction is to be celebrated until that hour in which the world, darkened from the sixth hour, performed its mournful office for the dead Lord, so that we too may then return to joy, when the world also recovered its brightness.

If this savors more of Christian religion, while it more fully celebrates the glory of Christ, I can equally fix the state of the late station from the same order of events, so that we fast until evening, awaiting the time of the Lord's burial, when Joseph, having made his request, took away the body and laid it in the tomb. Hence it is also irreverent to refresh the flesh of servants before that of the Lord. But this I may have ventured from the provocation of arguments, repelling conjectures with conjectures, and yet I think with more faithful ones. Let us see whether something of this kind is also supported for us from antiquity. In Exodus, was not that posture of Moses fighting against Amalek with prayers, persevering until sunset, a late station? Do we suppose that Joshua, fighting against the Amorites, dined on that day on which he commanded a station even upon the elements?

The sun stood still in Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon: the sun and moon stood in array, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies; and the sun stood in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten toward the west, until the end of one full day. There was no day like that before or after, certainly so prolonged; so that, as it says, God hearkened to a man, equal to the sun, persisting so long in his duty, a station even longer than a late one. Certainly Saul himself also, when stationed in battle, plainly proclaimed this duty: Cursed be the man who eats bread until evening, until I have avenged myself on my enemy; and all his people tasted nothing, and all the land did not dine.

And God gave such authority to the edict of that station, that Jonathan the son of Saul, although ignorant of the fast appointed until evening, had tasted honey, and was soon by lot convicted of the offence, and was barely rescued from danger by the prayer of the people, for he had been guilty of gluttony, though innocent. But also Daniel, in the first year of king Darius, when fasting in sackcloth and ashes he was making confession to God, and while, he says, I was yet speaking in prayer, behold the man whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying swiftly, drew near to me about the hour of the evening sacrifice. This will be the late station, which, fasting until evening, offers a richer prayer as sacrifice to God.

But all these things I believe are unknown to those who are troubled at our practices, or perhaps known only by reading and not by understanding as well, according to the greater force of the ignorant, among the most glorious multitude of the Psychics, of course. For this reason we have gone through the individual kinds of fasts, of xerophagies, of stations, so that while we review according to the provision of both Testaments how much the duties of refused, or cut short, or delayed food avail, we may refute those who weaken these things as though they were empty. Likewise, while we equally show in what order they have always stood in religion, we may confute those who accuse these things as new; for neither is that new which has always existed, nor is that empty which is useful.

But this too is in the midst of the matter: that certain of these duties, commanded by God to man, have established a law; certain, offered by man to God, have discharged a vow; yet even a vow, when it has been accepted by God, makes a law for the future, through the authority of the acceptor, for he has commanded it to be done thenceforth who approved it when done. And so here too the contention of the opposing party is raised in another form, when they say: either it is false prophecy if a spiritual voice has established these solemnities; or it is heresy if human presumption has devised them.

For, reproving that form which has also run through the old things, and turning back from it what the adversaries of the old things could retract against those; they will have to reject those things as well, or certainly to take up these things of necessity, especially since these things also, by whomsoever they were instituted, whether by a spiritual person or only by a faithful one, run to the same God to whom the old things also run. For undoubtedly both heresy and false prophecy will be judged among us all, the ministers of the one unique God the Creator and of His Christ, by the diversity of divinity; and so I defend this point indifferently, offering them the ground on which they wish to take their stand. It is the spirit of the devil, you say, O Psychic. And how does he proclaim the duties of our God, and those to be offered to none other than our God? Either contend that the devil acts together with our God, or let Satan be held to be the Paraclete.

But you affirm him to be a human Antichrist; for by that name heretics are called among John. And how does whoever he is, being in our Christ, arrange these duties toward our Lord, since even the Antichrists have proceeded against our Christ in opposition to God? To what side, then, do you think the spirit confirmed among us is inclined, when he commands, or when he approves what our God has both always commanded and approved? But again you set boundary posts for God, as regarding grace, so also regarding discipline; as regarding charisms, so also regarding solemnities; so that duties have ceased just as his benefits have, and thus you deny that he imposes duties even to this day, because here too the Law and the Prophets are until John: it remains for you to take away everything, insofar as it is so idle in you.

For now, enriched and satiated in this kind also, you reign, not reproaching the delicacies which are purged away by fasts, nor needing the knowledge of revelations which are wrested out by xerophagies, nor fearing your own wars which are dispelled by stations.

As though the Paraclete had fallen silent from John onward, we ourselves would have become prophets for this very purpose above all: I say no longer for entreating the wrath of God, nor for obtaining his protection or grace, but for fortifying by ourselves the condition of the last times, proclaiming all humility, since prison must be learned, and hunger and thirst must be exercised, and the endurance both of fasting and of anxious sustenance must be practiced, so that a Christian may enter prison such as he would have come out of it; not about to suffer punishment there, but discipline; not the torments of the world, but his own duties; and about to go forth all the more boldly to the contest from custody having made no use of the flesh, so that the torments too may have no material; being armored with skin alone and dry, and hardened against the claws, the moisture of blood having already been sent ahead, as it were the impediments of the soul, which itself now hastens, having already often fasted and knowing death from close at hand: plainly it is your way to provide eating-houses in prisons for uncertain martyrs, lest they seek their accustomed ways, lest the manner of life harm them, lest they be scandalized by the new discipline of abstinence, which even that former non-Christian martyr of yours had not touched; whom, having been fattened for some time with all the baths as better baptisms and all the retreats of luxury as more secret churches and all the allurements of this life as more worthy of eternity, by the facility of free custody, stuffed with everything, I think you bound lest he should wish to die, and finally on the very day of the tribunal, at the height of daylight, having been pre-medicated with undiluted wine as an antidote, you so unmanned him, that being tickled with a few claws—for that is what drunkenness felt—he was unable to answer any further to the presiding magistrate who asked him what Lord he confessed.

And so, already wrung out from this, having only hiccups and belches, he digested his denial in the very act of denying. Therefore those who preach the discipline of sobriety are false prophets, and those who observe it are heretics. Why then do you delay to believe in the Paraclete, whom you deny in Montanus, in Apicius? You prescribe that the solemnities of this faith have been established by the Scriptures or by the tradition of the fathers, and that nothing more of observance is to be added, on account of the unlawfulness of innovation. Stand on that ground if you can.

For behold I find you fasting even beyond the Passover, apart from those days on which the bridegroom was taken away, and interposing the half-fasts of stations, and indeed sometimes living on bread and water, as each one has seen fit; and finally you answer that these things are to be done at one's own discretion, not by command. You have therefore moved from your ground by exceeding tradition, since you undertake things that are not established. But what sort of thing is it that you permit to your own discretion what you do not give to the command of God? Shall human will have more license than divine power? I remember that I am free with respect to the world, not to God: thus it is my part to perform duty to the Lord of my own accord, just as it is his part to proclaim it; I owe him not only obedience but also devotion: the former I render by his command, the latter by my own choice.

And it is well that bishops too are accustomed to enjoin fasts upon the whole people; I do not speak of those done by design for the collecting of contributions, as is your practice of gain; but sometimes also from some cause of ecclesiastical concern. And so if even at a man's edict, and all together, you practice humility, how do you censure in us that very same unity of fasts and xerophagies and stations? Unless perhaps we offend against senatorial decrees and the commands of princes by our assemblies in opposition to them. The Holy Spirit, when he would preach in whatever lands and through whomever he wished, from foresight of impending ecclesiastical or worldly afflictions, as the Paraclete, that is the advocate, for entreating the judge, would enjoin remedies of duties of this kind. Consider now that it is for exercising the discipline of sobriety and abstinence; since we receive him, we necessarily also observe what he then established.

Look at the Jewish calendar, and you will find nothing new: if what has been commanded to the fathers, all subsequent posterity guards by hereditary religion. Moreover those councils are held throughout Greece in certain places, from all the churches, in which both higher matters are treated in common, and the very representation of the whole Christian name is celebrated with great veneration. And how worthy of the faith is it to gather from everywhere to Christ! See how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together; this you do not easily know how to sing, except at the time when you dine with a great many. But those assemblies, having first labored with stations and fasts, know how to mourn with those who mourn, and only then to rejoice with those who rejoice. If we too in different provinces perform those same solemnities which the present discourse then patronized, being represented to one another in spirit, it is the law of the sacrament.

Observing, therefore, the times of these things—both days and months and years—we are Galatianizing. Plainly so, if we are observers of Jewish ceremonies, of legal solemnities: for those the Apostle unteaches, restraining perseverance in the Old Testament buried in Christ, and establishing the new. But if in Christ a new condition now requires new solemnities as well; or if the Apostle has wholly erased all devotion to times and days and months and years, why do we celebrate the Passover in annual circuit in the first month? Why do we run through fifty days thence in all exultation? Why do we dedicate stations to the fourth and sixth day of the sabbath, and fasts to the parasceve?—although you also fast on the sabbath, if ever you continue it, holding that it must be fasted only at the Passover, according to the reasoning given elsewhere; whereas for us certainly every day is celebrated even by its common consecration. Neither, therefore, is the Apostle's reasoning about a distinction, distinguishing new things from old.

But here too your inconsistency will be laughed at, when you reproach us with the form of antiquities, in which you accuse the cause of novelty.

He also reproves those who commanded abstinence from foods, but by the providence of the Holy Spirit, pre-condemning heretics who would prescribe perpetual abstinence to destroy and despise the works of the Creator: such as I find among Marcion, among Tatian, among Jove, the present-day heretic from Pythagoras—not among the Paraclete. For how small is the restriction of foods among us? Two weeks of xerophagies in the year, and not even entire ones, excepting of course sabbaths and Lord's days, we offer to God; abstaining from those things which we do not reject but defer. Yet writing to the Romans, he now pricks you, detractors of this duty: Do not, he says, for the sake of food destroy the work of God. What work? That of which he says: It is good not to eat flesh, and not to drink wine. For he who serves in these things is pleasing and acceptable to our God.

One man believes that all things may be eaten, but another who is weak eats only vegetables; let him who eats not make nothing of him who does not eat. Who are you, to judge another's servant? And he who eats, and he who does not eat, gives thanks to God. But when he forbids controversy to be made by human judgment, how much more by divine! Thus he knew that some would attack those who are temperate and restrictive in diet—those who abstain from fastidiousness, not from duty; but he approves those who abstain in honor, not in contempt, of the Creator. And if he handed you the keys of the shambles, permitting all things for food in order to establish the exception of things offered to idols, he did not, however, enclose the kingdom of God in the shambles. For, he says, the kingdom of God is not food or drink, and, Food does not commend us to God; not that you should think this said of dry food, but rather of rich and elaborate fare.

For indeed, subjoining, neither if we eat shall we abound; nor if we do not eat shall we lack; he speaks more pointedly to you, who think you abound if you eat, and lack if you do not eat, and therefore disparage these things. How unworthily also do you interpret the Lord, eating and drinking everywhere at your pleasure—though I think he also fasted, who pronounced blessed not those who are full, but those who hunger and thirst; who declared his food to be not what his disciples had supposed, but the perfection of his Father's work, teaching to labor for the food which endures unto eternal life; who in the ordinary prayer also commanded that bread be asked for, not the riches of Attalus. So also Isaiah did not deny that God chose fasting, but enumerated what kind he did not choose.

For in the days, he says, of your fastings your pleasures are found, and you shake all those subject to you, or you fast amid insults and strife, and you strike with fists: I did not choose such a fast; but what kind he subjoined, and by subjoining did not take away but confirmed. For even if he prefers works of justice, yet not without sacrifice; which is the soul afflicted with fastings.

This is surely the God to whom neither a people incontinent in gluttony was pleasing, nor a priest, nor prophets. The monuments of concupiscence still stand, where the people most greedy of flesh was buried, having gorged itself to sickness on quails. Old Eli is struck down before the doors of the temple; his sons fall in battle; his daughter-in-law expires in childbirth. For this was the plague that the shameless house, defrauder of carnal sacrifices, had deserved from God. Shemaiah, the man of God, when he had prophesied the end of the idolatry introduced by king Jeroboam, after the king's hand had withered and was immediately restored, after the altar was poured out—invited by the king on account of these signs and in satisfaction, he plainly excused himself.

For he had been forbidden by God to touch food there at all; but having rashly eaten, misled by another old man who falsely claimed prophecy, according to the word of God there made over the table, he was not buried in his fathers' tomb: for he was struck down by a lion encountered on the road, and buried among strangers, paying the penalty for the abandoned fast. These were examples both for the people and for bishops, even spiritual ones, if they had admitted any incontinence of gluttony. But not even in the underworld did admonition cease, where in the rich man banquets are tormented, but in the poor man fasts are refreshed, having Moses and the Prophets as their teachers. For Joel also cried out: Sanctify a fast, and proclaim a healing, foreseeing even then that other apostles and prophets would also sanction fasting and proclaim duties that propitiate God. Hence also those who flatter by eating at idols, and adorning altars, and saluting them at every hour, are said to perform a propitiation.

But also every humility the pagans acknowledge. When the sky is stunned and the year parched, barefoot processions are proclaimed, magistrates lay aside their purple, turn their fasces backward, call for prayer, renew sacrifice. But in certain colonies, moreover, by annual rite, wrapped in sackcloth and sprinkled with ash, they present to their idols a suppliant fast; baths and taverns are closed until the ninth hour. One fire alone in public at the altars, no water even in basins. The Ninevite cessation of business, I believe. The Jewish fast certainly is celebrated everywhere, when, leaving aside their temples, along every shore wherever in the open they at last send up prayer to heaven; and though they dishonor the duty of mourning by their dress and adornment, yet they affect the faith of abstinence and sigh for the authority of the star that delays. But well done, that casting blasphemies upon our xerophagies, you equate them with the fast of Isis and Cybele. I accept the comparison as testimony.

Hence it will be established that the divine is divine, which the devil, imitator of divine things, copies. Falsehood is built from truth, superstition is compacted from religion. Hence you are the more irreligious, the more readily the pagan is prepared. He at last sacrifices his appetite to an idol; you are unwilling to do so for God. For God is your belly, and your lung is the temple, and your paunch the altar, and the cook the priest, and the Holy Spirit the steam, and the seasonings the charisms, and the belch the prophecy.

You are old—truly old, if we wish to speak truly—you who indulge your appetite so greatly, and rightly boast yourself the elder; I always recognize the taste of Esau the hunter of wild beasts: so do you everywhere busy yourself tracking thrushes, so do you come in from the field of your most lax discipline, so do you faint in spirit, that if I offer you a lentil stew reddened with grape-syrup, you will straightway sell all your birthright; among you the agape boils in pots, faith grows warm in kitchens, hope lies among the courses. But greater than these is love, by means of which your young men sleep with sisters. The appendages of gluttony, of course—wantonness and luxury—whose association the Apostle also knowing, when he had first said: Not in revellings, nor in carousings; added: nor in chamberings and licentiousnesses.

It pertains to the reputation of your gluttony that among you the double honor for those who preside is reckoned in two portions of food; whereas the Apostle gave double honor meaning both to brethren and to those set over them. Who among you is holier, unless he dines more frequently, unless he is more lavish in providing delicacies, unless he is better furnished with cups? Rightly do you, men of soul and flesh alone, refuse spiritual things. If prophets were to please such as these, they were not mine. Why then do you not consistently proclaim: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die? Just as we do not hesitate to command openly: Let us fast, brothers and sisters, lest perchance we die tomorrow. Let us openly vindicate our disciplines. We are certain that those who are in the flesh cannot please God; not, of course, in the substance of flesh, but in its care, in its affection, in its activity, in its will.

Leanness does not displease us; for God did not assign flesh by weight, just as neither the spirit by measure, and more easily perhaps will the more slender flesh enter through the narrow gate of salvation, more quickly will the lighter flesh be raised, longer will the drier flesh endure in the tomb. Let the wrestlers and Olympic boxers be fattened: bodily ambition befits those for whom strength also is necessary. And yet even they grow strong through xerophagies; but our strengths are different, and our powers different, as also our contests are different; for whom the struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of the world, against the spiritual forces of wickedness—against these, not with flesh and blood, but with faith and robust spirit must one stand. Otherwise, the more fattened Christian will be necessary perhaps for bears and lions rather than for God, unless indeed he must also exercise leanness against the beasts.