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.17    See Gen. ii. 16, 17.  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”18    Comp. Eph. v. 32 with Gen. ii. 23, 24. with reference to Christ and the Church, and no longer being “capable of the things which were the Spirit’s,”19    See 1 Cor. ii. 14. yielded more readily to his belly than to God, heeded the meat rather than the mandate, and sold salvation for his gullet!  He ate, in short, and perished; saved (as he would) else (have been), if he had preferred to fast from one little tree:  so that, even from this early date, animal faith may recognise its own seed, deducing from thence onward its appetite for carnalities and rejection of spiritualities.  I hold, therefore, that from the very beginning the murderous gullet was to be punished with the torments and penalties of hunger.  Even if God had enjoined no preceptive fasts, still, by pointing out the source whence Adam was slain, He who had demonstrated the offence had left to my intelligence the remedies for the offence.  Unbidden, I would, in such ways and at such times as I might have been able, have habitually accounted food as poison, and taken the antidote, hunger; through which to purge the primordial cause of death—a cause transmitted to me also, concurrently with my very generation; certain that God willed that whereof He nilled the contrary, and confident enough that the care of continence will be pleasing to Him by whom I should have understood that the crime of incontinence had been condemned.  Further:  since He Himself both commands fasting, and calls “a soul20    The reference is to Ps. li. 17 (in LXX. Ps. l. 19). 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)?

CAPUT III.

Itaque nos hoc prius affirmare debemus, quod occulte subrui periclitatur, quantum valeat apud Deum inanitas ista, et ante omnia unde ratio ipsa processerit hoc modo promerendi Deum; tunc enim agnoscetur observationis necessitas, cum eluxerit rationis auctoritas a primordio recensendae. Acceperat 0958A Adam a Deo legem non gustandi de arbore agnitionis boni et mali, moriturus si gustasset. Verum et ipse tunc in psychicum reversus post ecstasin spiritalem, in qua magnum illud sacramentum in Christum et Ecclesiam prophetaverat, nec jam capiens quae erant spiritus, facilius ventri quam Deo cessit, pabulo potiusquam praecepto annuit; salutem gula vendidit. Manducavit denique, et periit: salvus alioquin, si uni arbusculae jejunare maluisset ; ut jam hinc animalis fides semen suum recognoscat, exinde deducens carnalium appetitionem, et spiritualium recusationem. Teneo igitur a primordio homicidam gulam, tormentis atque suppliciis in die puniendam, etiamsi Deus nulla jejunia praecepisset; ostendens tamen unde sit occisus Adam, mihi reliquerat intelligenda remedia offensae, 0958B qui offensam demonstrarat: ultro cibum quibus modis, quibusque temporibus potuissem, pro veneno deputarem, et antidotum famem sumerem, per quam purgarem mortis a primordio caussam in me quoque cum ipso genere transductam, certus hoc Deum velle, cujus contrarium noluit, satisque confidens placituram illi continentiae curam, a quo damnatam comperissem incontinentiae culpam. Porro, cum et ipse jejunium mandet, et animam conquassatam proprie utique cibi angustiis sacrificium appellet (Ps. L, 18), quis jam dubitabit omnium erga victum macerationum hanc fuisse rationem, qua rursus interdicto cibo, et observato praecepto, primordiale jam delictum expiaretur, ut homo per eamdem materiam caussae satis Deo faciat, per quam offenderat, 0958C id est, per cibi interdictionem; atque ita salutem aemulo modo redaccenderet inedia, sicut exstinxerat sagina, pro unico illicito plura licita contemnens.