The re sort. And, let me add, to take away the reproach with which our adversaries justly reproach the generality of us, 'for living without intervals of religious abstinence and fasting, in constant ease and fulness, and despising the wholesome orders of the Church, in which we expect to be saved.'" proach of so many years, is, alas! our reproach still. Still, it needs to be taken away. God may bless the same earnest words, now again, to some thoughtless ones alive, as, haply, he did to many, who are dead, and gone to their last account. I know of no copy of the words, but my own; and, as they should not be withheld from others, I give them here, in preference to any I can find. One thing only must be premised; they were written to a priest of the English Church, who, it is supposed, despised the fasts of the Church, argued against the observance of them, and ridiculed those who kept them. God grant there may be no such priests among us now! A DISCOURSE BETWEEN TWO CLERGYMEN. You ask me why I keep Lent and the Fasts of the Church? I answer, I. I do it as an act of obedience and love to the Church, which not only approves and recommends, but appoints them to be kept; which, to my conscience, has the force and obligation of a command. And then, I am resolved to believe that "to obey is better than sacrifice; and to hearken, than the fat of rams. ." So saith God, by His prophet in the Old Testament; and by His apostle, I am sure His Spirit commands in the New-"Obey them that have the rule over you, for they watch for your souls."+ II. I do it as an act of self-denial and discipline; to learn to deny myself lawful pleasures and enjoyments, that I may keep the safer distance from unlawful ones. No man will be apt to impoverish and oppress his brother, who can be content, sometimes, to hear his own bowels croak for bread, and go without it. III. I do it as an act of humiliation; to express the sense and apprehension I have of my own vileness, and of my being unworthy to enjoy any good thing from God, or to receive even my daily food at His hands. IV. I do it as an act of holy revenge upon myself, for any (though the least) excesses and irregularities: "But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." For when I refuse the comforts which I might lawfully enjoy, as a revenge upon myself for any comforts which I have not lawfully enjoyed, it is a kind of undoing of what I have done, as far as I can; a going contrary to, as well as a checking myself for, any such irregular action. V. I do it as an act of penitential accusing, and judging of myself, "that I may not be judged,” § I thus smite myself, that my tender Father seeing * 1 Sam. xv. 22. 1 Cor. ix. 27. + Heb. xiii. 17. § 1 Cor. xi. 31. this, may not smite me, with severity, hereafter. He will be more apt to spare me, when he sees I do not spare myself. VI. I do it, as an act of religious prudence (supposing it not to be a direct duty, commanded or recommended for itself), it being exceedingly apt to make a person circumspect and wary, diligent and watchful over his soul, according to that of the Apostle, "what carefulness it wrought in you!"* VII. I do it, from a principle of fear, not to encourage and entertain a spirit of obstinacy and perverseness, stubbornness and profaneness; from a pure conscientious awe of becoming refractory and disobedient. For, when I consider the disobedience of many people, in other matters, to the pious institutions and appointments of the Church, I often think upon the words of the Apostle, how he ranks folly and disobedience together," For we ourselves were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts."+ First foolish, then disobedient; and no disobedient persons are otherwise, how wise soever they may think themselves. He that will not obey the will of his pious and indulgent superiors; just it is that such an one should be given up to serve his own lusts. And I generally find, that those men's appetites and passions scorn to obey their superiors, who by their own disobedience, have taught their inferior powers to rebel. And here, also, I have made another observation; that many men's affections are so strongly set upon liberty and pleasure, that they make them invent or † Tit. iii. 3. * 2 Cor. vii. 11. take up opinions, to defend their own wicked and licentious practices. Besides, Sir, say what you will to me of my submitting my judgment to my rightful lawful superiors, and miscall it (as long as you will) a blind obedience; I am sure, as there may be a lame as well as a blind sacrifice, so, am I satisfied, there may be a lame as well as a blind obedience; a blind one generally is sincere, the other is always insincere, as well as imperfect." And, after all you can say, I believe that you are mistaken, in your notions of obedience that which formally constitutes obedience is, to do anything for no other reason but because it is commanded by spiritual superiors. To do anything for other ends, for the justice, equity, or goodness of it, may bring it under the title of some other virtue; but this alone, because it is commanded by our spiritual fathers, makes it obedience. When I consider, too, how the very first disobedience was said to be an instance of eating; and at the same time, how much God is pleased by an abstemious obedience, though only by the command of man, I will no more complain of a little restraint in diet, when it gives me a tender thought of that disobedient eating which provoked God, and of that obedient abstinence which so much pleased Him. VIII. I do it as an act of religious prudence, for another reason; that is, to learn to subdue my own will; to get the victory and mastery over myself, in all things; and to learn to lead a truly Christian and crucified life. * Jer. xxxv. Even a heathen could once say, 66 'Est virtus placitis abstinuisse bonis." It is a virtue to abstain from pleasing things; and shall we Christians know nothing of it? IX. I do it as an act of faith; that is, not doubting but that He, who encourages it, will accept it; and (as He is pleased to say Himself) will "reward it openly." For, as prayer is the offering up of my soul to God; as almsgiving is an offering up of goods to God; so, fasting is an offering up of my body (I mean my bodily appetites) to God; and accordingly, they are all three encouraged together in one chapter of God's Word.* X. I do it, because fasting inspirits my repentance, making it the more sensible and pungent, as being afflictive and penal to the soul, and therefore a help to a deeper and more tender resentment of its iniquities; for which reason, times of fasting and times of penitence were always joined together. And, if I have a mind, by afflicting myself thus, to be able to say with S. Paul (in some measure), “I am crucified with Christ," no pious man, surely, will censure me, as you do, for this; and therefore I will say with the same Apostle, "From henceforth, let no man trouble me," if I have a mind thus "to bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." + XI. I do it because I would not be so soft and tender as not to endure those severities which Christian philosophy teaches us to learn and practise, and by these lesser afflictions and sufferings, to endure hardships, as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.§ *S. Matt. vi. † Gal. ii. 20. |