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object, is by no means the sole end of Fasting.[1]
[2] The great purpose, in connection with which it is chiefly mentioned in Holy Scripture, is prayer. The influences of Society, rightly chosen, may dispose the mind to more fervent (possibly only more excited) prayer; it is solitude generally, or communion with a single friend, which brings us to a humble, contrite, lowly, intercourse with our God. In the present day, the first paramount evil which destroys its tens of thousands, is probably self-indulgence; the second, which hinders thousands in their progress heavenwards, is the being "busy and careful about many things," whether temporal or spiritual. "We have kept the vineyards of our mother's children, but our own vineyards have we not kept." The tendency of the age is to activity, and we have caught its spirit; if we be but active about our Master's calling we deem ourselves secure; we think not, until we are precluded from active exertion, "how much activity belongs to some (ages and some) natures, and that this nature is often mistaken for grace."[3] Meanwhile an activity, which leads us not inwards, has taken place of that tranquil retiring meditation on the things of the unseen world which formed the deep, absorbing, contemplative, piety of our forefathers; even the conception of the joys of heaven, which very many of us form, is but a glorified transcript of our life here; we look, when through God's mercy in Christ we shall be delivered from the burthen of the flesh, to be like the "Ministers of His, who do His pleasure;" but we look not, comparatively at least, to that which our Fathers longed for, to
- ↑ "Much hurt hath grown to the Church of God through a false imagination that Fasting standeth men in no stead for any spiritual respect, but only to take down the frankness of nature, and to tame the wildness of the flesh. Whereupon the world being bold to surfeit, doth now blush to fast, supposing that men, when they fast, do rather bewray a disease, than exercise a virtue. I much wonder what they, who are thus persuaded, do think, what conceit they have, concerning the Fasts of the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles, our Lord Jesus Christ himself." Hooker's Eccl. Pol. B. v. §. 72.
- ↑ "If the Church intends many good ends in the Canon, any one is sufficient to tie the law upon the conscience, because, for that one good end, it can be serviceable to the soul; and indeed Fasting is of that nature, that it can be a ministery of repentance by the affliction, and it can be a help to prayer, by taking off the loads of flesh and a full stomach; and it can be aptly ministerial to contemplation. Now, because every one is concerned in some one or more of these ends of Fasting, all people are included within the circles of the law, unless by some other means they be exempted." Bp. Taylor, Rule of Conscience, B iii. c. 4. rule 19.
- ↑ A Fragment, written in illness, by the Rev, Richard Cecil.
