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.”31    Comp. 1 Cor. x. 7 with Ex. xxxii. 6.  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.”32    See Deut. xxxii. 15.  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.”33    See Deut. viii. 12–14.  To the corrupting power of riches He made the enormity of edacity antecedent, for which riches themselves are the procuring agents.34    Comp. Eccles. vi. 7; Prov. xvi. 26.  (The LXX. render the latter quotation very differently from the Eng. ver. or the Vulg.)  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”35    See Isa. vi. 10; John xii. 40; Acts xxviii. 26, 27. obstructed by the “fats” of which He had expressly forbidden the eating,36    See Lev. iii. 17. teaching man not to be studious of the stomach.37    See Deut. viii. 3; Matt. iv. 4; Luke iv. 4.

On the other hand, he whose “heart” was habitually found “lifted up”38    See Ps. lxxxvi. 4 (in LXX. lxxxv. 4); Lam. iii. 41 (in LXX. iii. 40). 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),39    Twice over.  See Ex. xxiv. 18 and xxxiv. 28; Deut. ix. 11, 25. 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!40    See Ex. xxxiii. 18, 19, with xxxiv. 4–9, 29–35.  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.41    See Matt. xvii. 1–13; Mark ix. 1–13; Luke ix. 28–36.  For Elijah withal had, by this fact primarily, that he had imprecated a famine,42    See Jas. v. 17. 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.”43    See 1 Kings xvii. 1 (in LXX. 3 Kings ib.).  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!44    See 1 Kings xix. 1–8.  But he took two meals:  see vers. 6, 7, 8.  “What (doest) thou, Elijah, here?”45    Vers. 9, 13.  Much more friendly was this voice than, “Adam, where art thou?”46    Gen. iii. 9 (in LXX.).  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-fellow47    Comp. Matt. xvii. 4; Mark ix. 5; Luke ix. 33. with man—peer, in truth, with peer!  For if the eternal God will not hunger, as He testifies through Isaiah,48    See Ps. xl. 28 in LXX.  In E.V., “fainteth not.” this will be the time for man to be made equal with God, when he lives without food.

CAPUT VI.

Nunc si temere rationes castigati a Deo victus, et castigandi propter Deum a nobis, ad primordiorum experimenta revocavimus, conscientiam communem consulamus, ipsa natura enuntiabit, quales nos ante pabulum et potum in virgine adhuc saliva exhibere consuerit rebus duntaxat sensus agendis quo divina tractantur si multo pollentioris mentis, si multo vivatioris cordis, quam cum totum illud domicilium interioris hominis, escis stipatum, vinis inundatum, 0960C decoquendis jam stercoribus aestuans , praemeditatorium efficitur latrinarum, in quo plane nihil tam in proximo supersit, quam ad lasciviam sapere. Manducavit populus et bibit, et surrexerunt ludere (Ex. XXXII, 6). Intellige sanctae Scripturae verecundiam: lusum, nisi impudicum, non denotasset. Caeterum, quotusquisque meminerit religionis, occupatis memoriae locis, impeditis sapientiae membris? Nemo ita ut decet, ita ut par est, ita ut utile est, recordabitur Dei in eo tempore , quo ipsum sibi hominem excidere solemne est. Omnem disciplinam victus 0961A aut occidit aut vulnerat. Mentior, si non Dominus ipse oblivionem sui exprobrans Israeli, caussam plenitudini deputat : Incrassatus est dilectus, et pinguefactus, et dilatatus est, et dereliquit Deum qui fecit eum, et abscessit a Domino salutificatore suo (Deut. XXXII, 15). Denique in eodem Deuteronomio eamdem causam praecaveri jubens: Ne, inquit, cum manducaveris et biberis, et domos optimas aedificaveris, ovibus et bobus tuis multiplicatis, et argento et auro, extollatur cor tuum, et obliviscaris Domini Dei tui (Deut., VIII, 12). Praeposuit corruptelae divitiarum edacitatis enormitatem, cui ipsae divitiae procurant. Per illas scilicet incrassatum erat cor populi, ne oculis videret, et auribus audiret, et corde conjiceret adipibus obstructo, quas nominatim 0961B esui abstulit, dedocens hominem saginae studere. Caeterum, cui cor erectum potius inveniebatur quam impingnatum, quadraginta diebus totidemque noctibus supra humanae naturae facultatem jejunium perennavit, spiritali fide virtutem subministrante; et vidit oculis Dei gloriam, et audivit auribus Dei vocem, et corde conjecit Dei legem jam tunc docentis non in solo pane vivere hominem, sed in omni verbo Dei (Luc., IV, 4); cum quidem nec ipsum Moysen Deo pastum, inediamque ejus nomine saginatam constanter contemplari valeret pinguior populus. Merito igitur etiam in carne se Dominus ei ostendit collegae jejuniorum suorum, non minus et Heliae. Nam et Helias hoc primum quod famem 0961C fuerat imprecatus, satis jam se jejuniis voverat: Vivit, inquit, Dominus, cui adsisto in conspectu ejus, si erit ros istis annis et imber (III Reg., XVII). Dehinc minantem Jezabel fugiens post unicum pabulum et potum, quem ab angelo expergefactus invenerat, et ipse, quadraginta diebus et noctibus vacuo ventre, arido ore, pervenit in montem Choreb; ubi cum in spelunca devertisset, quam familiari congressu Dei exceptus est! Quid tu, Helia, hic (III Reg., XIX, 9)? multo amicior ista vox, quam, Adam, ubi es, (Gen., III, 9). Illa enim pasto homini minabatur, ista jejuno blandiebatur. Tanta est circumscripti victus praerogativa, ut Deum praestet homini contubernalem, parem revera pari. Si enim Deus aeternus non esuriet (Is., I, 11), ut testatur per Esaiam, hoc erit tempus quo homo Deo adaequetur, 0961D cum sine pabulo vivit.