state? For His fasting was not required to fulfil the law, since fasting formed no part of the law, and was engrafted upon it by the prophets, or spiritual men among the Jews, as a part of self-discipline, and so was an evangelical portion of the old despensation. And, as matter of history, who, among Christians, have fasted most rigidly? Uniformly, the most spiritual; and they, increasingly, as they went on heavenwards.
And to what else can one attribute it, that so many eminent men in the French Church, amid all the disadvantages of a corrupt religion, attained a degree of spirituality rare among ourselves.
"Fasting is Popish." If this means, that it has been preserved amid the errors of Romanism, is not this true of most of the truths of the Gospel? Our charge against the Romanists, generally, is not that they have not preserved the truth, but that, like the Pharisees, "they have made it of none effect by their traditions;" at least, in great measure, to so many of their members. And does not the objection imply that we have forgotten the peculiar character of our church, which is not a mere Protestant, but a Primitive Church? And if we are to prevail in our approaching conflict with Romanism, or to be (as we seem marked out to be) a means of reclaiming that Church, must we not reconsider the character of our own Church, and take our stand in its principles, not in the protestantism of other churches, or of the day?
Oxford,
Passion-Week.
These Tracts are published Monthly, and sold at the price of 2d. for each sheet, or 7s. for 50 copies.
LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. G. & F. RIVINGTON,
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE.
1835.
Gilbert & Rivington, Printers, St. John's Square, London.
