Therefore, setting aside the Paraclete, the confirmer of all these things, the guide of all truth, inquire whether a worthier rationale for observing the ninth hour be adduced among us, so that even to Peter that rationale must be reckoned, if he then discharged a station. For it comes from the departure of the Lord, whom, although He ought always to be commemorated without difference of hours, we nevertheless then more markedly devote ourselves to according to the very word of 'station.' (7.) For soldiers too, never unmindful of their oath, more readily attend to their stations. And so the pressure is to be celebrated up to that hour in which the world, darkened from the sixth hour, performed the mournful office at the Lord's death, so that then we too may return to gladness, when the world also received back its brightness. (8.)
If this savours more of the Christian religion, inasmuch as it more celebrates the glory of Christ, I can equally fix the state of a late station from the same order of the matter, so that we should fast until the late time, awaiting the hour of the Lord's burial, when Joseph took down the body he had asked for and buried it. Hence too it is irreligious for the flesh of servants to be refreshed before that of the Lord. (9.) But thus far let me have joined battle in these matters from the provocation of arguments, striking back conjectures with conjectures—and yet, I think, more faithful ones. Let us see whether anything of the sort patronizes us also from the antiquities. In Exodus, was not that posture of Moses, warring against Amalek by his prayers, persevering unto the setting of the sun, a late station? (10.)
Do we suppose that Joshua son of Nun, while warring down the Amorites, took his midday meal on that day when he commanded a 'station' even upon the very elements? 'The sun stood still in Gibeon and the moon in Aijalon; the sun and moon stood still in their station, until the people were avenged of their enemies, and the sun stood in mid-heaven.' But as it drew toward its setting and the end of that single day, there was no day like it before or in the last age — so prolonged, indeed, that (Scripture says) God hearkened to a man, one equal, forsooth, to the sun, urgent so long in his duty, his station longer even than the evening. Certainly Saul too, when set in the battle, plainly enjoined this same office: 'Cursed be the man that shall eat bread until evening, until I be avenged of my enemy'; and his whole people tasted nothing, though all the land had food to hand.
So great an authority did God grant to the edict of that station, that Jonathan, Saul's son, although unaware that the fast had been appointed to last until evening, had allowed himself a taste of honey — and forthwith he was presently arraigned for the offense, and scarcely by the people's entreaty was he snatched from peril; for he had been guilty of gluttony, albeit an innocent one. But Daniel too, in the first year of King Darius, when fasting in sackcloth and ashes he was making his confession to God, says: 'And while I was yet speaking in prayer, behold, the man whom I had seen in a vision at the beginning, flying swiftly, drew near to me about the hour of the evening sacrifice.' This shall be the late station, which, fasting until evening, offers to God a richer prayer.
All these things, I believe, are unknown to those who are troubled at our practices — or perhaps known only by cursory reading and not by close attention, according to the greater force of the untrained among that most glorious multitude, forsooth, of the Psychics. For this reason we have set forth, one by one, the several kinds of fasts, of dry-diets (xerophagies), and of stations, so that, while we review — according to the equipment of both Testaments — how much profit lies in the observances of food refused or cut short or deferred, we may beat back those who weaken these as though they were idle; and likewise, while we show in what rank of religion they have always stood, we may refute those who accuse them as novelties. For nothing is new that has always been, nor is that idle which is useful.
But this too lies in the middle: that some of these observances, commanded by God to man, have established a law; while others, offered by man to God, have discharged a vow. Yet even a vow, when it has been accepted by God, makes a law for the future through the authority of Him who accepted it; for He who approved the deed thereby commanded that it be done. And so from this quarter too a wrangling of the opposing party is raised under another guise, when they say: it is either false prophecy, if a spiritual voice has appointed these solemn observances, or heresy, if human presumption has devised them. For, in blaming that form by which the ancient practices too ran their course, and turning back from it the objections which even the adversaries of the ancients could bring against those old practices, they will either have to reject those as well, or to take up these openly;
— necessarily so, above all since these too, from whatever founder they come, whether spiritual or merely faithful, run to the same God to whom the ancient ones ran. For undoubtedly both heresy and false prophecy will be judged by the diversity of their deity, among us who are all champions of the one God the Creator and of His Christ; and so I defend this position indifferently, offering my opponents the ground on which they choose to plant their foot. 'It is a spirit of the devil,' you say, O Psychic. And how is it that it enjoins the observances of our God, and observances to be offered to none other than our God? Either contend that the devil acts in concert with our God, or let Satan be counted the Paraclete. But you affirm that it is a man, an antichrist; for by this name the heretics are called in John.
And how has this one, whoever he is, arranged in our Christ these observances toward our Lord, seeing that the antichrists have set out toward God against our Christ? By what side, then, do you think the Spirit is proved among us — when it commands, or when it approves the very things that our God has both always commanded and approved? But again you set boundary-stakes upon God, as with grace, so with discipline; as with the charismata, so also with the solemn observances — so that observances have ceased in like manner as His benefits, and thus you deny that He still imposes duties, on the plea that here too 'the law and the prophets were until John.' It only remains for you to take away the whole, so far as in you lies, as though it were quite idle.
For already, in this sphere too, you reign, enriched and sated — not incurring any sins that must be filed away by fasts, nor lacking the knowledge of revelations that must be wrung out by dry-diets, nor fearing any wars of your own that must be shattered by stations.
Even had the Paraclete fallen silent since John, we ourselves would have arisen as prophets for this very cause — no longer, I say, to entreat away God's wrath, nor to obtain His protection or grace, but to fortify by our own selves against the conditions of the last times, proclaiming all humiliation (tapeinophronesis), since the prison must be conned by heart, hunger and thirst must be practiced, and endurance both of starvation and of scanty fare must be taken up — so that a Christian may enter prison such as he would come forth from it, there to suffer not punishment but discipline, not the torments of the world but his own observances; and that he may go forth the more confident to the contest, having, from his custody, spent away nothing of the flesh — so that the torments may have no matter to work on, since he is mailed with skin alone and dry, horny against the iron claws, the sap of his blood already sent on ahead as a hindrance of the soul, that soul now hastening on, which, often fasting, has already learned to know death at close hand.
Plainly it is your way to set up cook-shops in the prisons for martyrs of uncertain resolve, lest they miss their accustomed fare, lest they weary of life, lest they be scandalized by the new discipline of abstinence — that abstinence which not even that Pristinus of yours, no Christian martyr, had so much as touched, whom, gorged for a good while by the license of a free custody, with all baths (as though better than baptism) and all luxury's retreats (as though more secret than the church) and all the allurements of this life (as though worthier than the eternal), you bound over, I suppose, by this, that he might be unwilling to die; and at last, on the very day of the tribunal, at high noon, drugged beforehand with well-aged wine as with an antidote, you so unnerved him that, tickled by a few claws (for that was all his drunkenness felt), he could no longer answer the governor who asked whom he confessed as Lord — and thus, already wrung out over this, having nothing but hiccups and belches, he departed in the very act of denial.
Therefore those who preach the discipline of sobriety are false prophets — therefore heretics, those who observe it! Why then do you hesitate to believe in the Paraclete, whom you deny in Montanus, when you find him in Apicius? You lay it down that the solemn observances have been fixed for this faith by the Scriptures or by the tradition of the elders, and that nothing more of observance may be added, because innovation is unlawful. Stand on that footing, if you can. For behold, I take you to task — you who also fast besides the Pascha, apart from those days on which the Bridegroom was taken away; and who interpose the half-fasts of stations; and who now and then live on bread and water, as it has seemed good to each. In short, you answer that these things are to be done at one's own discretion, not by command.
You have therefore shifted your ground by overstepping tradition, when you perform things that are not appointed. But what sort of thing is it, that you allow to your own discretion what you do not grant to God's command? Shall more be lawful to the human will than to the divine power? I remember that I am free with respect to the world, not with respect to God. Thus it is mine, of my own accord, to render service to the Lord; thus it is His to enjoin it. I owe Him not only obedience but also homage; the one I supply by His command, the other by my own discretion. But it is well that the bishops too are wont to enjoin fasts upon the whole people — I do not mean with a view to collecting alms, as is your practice of catching gain, but sometimes also for some cause of ecclesiastical anxiety.
And so, if you too both by a man's edict and all together practice humiliation, how is it that in us you brand this same unity of fasts and dry-diets and stations? Unless perhaps we transgress against decrees of the senate and mandates of the emperors set against assemblies. The Holy Spirit, while He preached in whatever lands He would and through whomever He would, out of foresight of impending trials — whether ecclesiastical temptations or worldly scourges — inasmuch as He is called the Paraclete, that is, the Advocate for entreating the Judge, was enjoining remedies of this kind of observances: as, for instance, now for exercising the discipline of sobriety and abstinence. We who receive Him necessarily observe also the things which He then appointed.
Look at the Jewish calendars and you will find nothing new, seeing that whatever was commanded to the fathers, all posterity thereafter guards by an inherited religion. Moreover, throughout the provinces of Greece there are held, in certain places, those councils out of all the churches, through which both the weightier matters are handled in common, and the very representation of the whole Christian name is celebrated with great reverence. And how worthy this is — that men should gather from everywhere to Christ, with faith presiding! 'See how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!' This is a psalm you do not easily know how to sing, except at the time when you dine with a large company. But those assemblies, having first labored at stations and fasts, know how to grieve with them that grieve, and only so at last to rejoice with them that rejoice.
If we too, in our various provinces, discharge these same solemn observances — over which the word, then present, gave its patronage — being mutually represented in spirit, that is the law of the sacrament. Observing then the seasons of these things, and days and months and years, do we 'Galatianize'? Plainly, if we are observers of Jewish ceremonies, if of legal solemnities; for those the Apostle unteaches, restraining the persistence of the Old Testament that is buried in Christ, and pressing on to the new. But if there is a new condition in Christ, then the solemn observances too must be new; or if the Apostle wholly wiped away all devotion of seasons and days and months and years, why do we celebrate the Pascha in a yearly cycle in the first month?
Why do we thereafter pass fifty days in all exultation? Why do we devote the fourth and sixth days of the week to stations, and Preparation-day (Parasceve) to fasts? — although you too, if ever, prolong even the Sabbath, holding that one must never fast except at the Pascha, according to a reasoning rendered elsewhere. For us, certainly, every day is celebrated even by common consecration. There is, then, no ground of distinction with the Apostle, who distinguishes new things from old. But here too your inconsistency will be laughed at, when you reproach us with a form of antiquities in the very matter wherein you accuse us of the charge of novelty.
He also reproves those who bid men abstain from foods — but by the foresight of the Holy Spirit, condemning beforehand the heretics who would enjoin perpetual abstinence, to destroy and despise the works of the Creator; such as I find in Marcion, in Tatian, in Jove, that heretic of today derived from Pythagoras — but not in the Paraclete. For how small is the interdiction of foods among us? Two weeks of dry-diets in the year — and not even the whole of them, the Sabbaths and Lord's Days being of course excepted — we offer to God, abstaining from those things which we do not reject but defer. And yet, writing to the Romans, he now pricks you who disparage this observance: 'Do not,' he says, 'for the sake of food, destroy the work of God.' What work? That of which he says:
'It is good not to eat flesh and not to drink wine. For he who in these things serves is pleasing and acceptable to our God. One believes that all things may be eaten, but another, being weak, eats herbs; let him who eats not set at naught him who eats not. Who art thou that judgest another's servant? Both he who eats and he who eats not give thanks to God.' Now if he forbids controversy to be made over a human discretion, how much more over a divine one? Thus he knew how to arraign certain chastisers and interdictors of diet — those who would abstain out of squeamishness, not out of observance — but to approve those who abstained in honor, not in reproach, of the Creator.
And if he handed you the keys of the meat-market, permitting all things to be eaten so as to establish the exception of things sacrificed to idols, yet he did not shut up the kingdom of God in the meat-market. 'For,' he says, 'the kingdom of God is not eating or drinking,' and, 'food does not commend us to God' — which you must not think said of a dry diet, but rather of a rich and dainty one, since he adds: 'neither if we eat shall we abound, nor if we eat not shall we come short' — and this thunders rather against you, who suppose you abound if you eat and come short if you eat not, and therefore disparage these practices.
The Lord too — how unworthily you interpret Him to your own lust, as one eating and drinking here and there! But I hold that He also fasted, He who pronounced blessed not the sated but the hungry and thirsty; He who professed a food — not the one His disciples supposed, but the perfection of the Father's work — teaching men to work for the food that endures unto life eternal; who, in the ordinary prayer too, bids us ask for bread, and not for the riches of an Attalus. So Isaiah too did not deny that God had chosen a fast, but enumerated what kind He had not chosen. 'For in the days of your fasts,' He says, 'your own wills are found, and you shake up all who are subject to you; or you fast unto quarrels and strifes, and strike with your fists.'
'Such a fast I have not chosen,' but such as He subjoined — and by subjoining He did not take it away, but confirmed it. For even if He prefers the works of righteousness, yet not without sacrifice, which is a soul buffeted by fasts. That God, surely, whom neither a people incontinent of gluttony pleased, nor priest, nor prophet. There yet remain the monuments of concupiscence, where a people most greedy of flesh was buried, having glutted itself on quails even to a sickness. Old Eli is dashed down before the doors of the temple, his sons fall in the battle-line, his daughter-in-law expires in childbirth. For this plague that shameless house had deserved from God — a house that plundered the fleshly sacrifices.
Shemaiah, a man of God — when he had prophesied the downfall of the idolatry introduced by King Jeroboam, after that king's hand was withered and at once restored, after the altar was cleft — being invited by the king, on account of these signs, to a meal of thanks, plainly excused himself (for he had been forbidden by God) from touching food there at all; but presently, having been rashly fed by another old man who lied about being a prophet, contrary to the word of God there given at the table, he was not buried among his fathers. For, laid low by the onset of a lion on the way and buried among strangers, he paid the penalty of a fast forsaken. These shall be examples both to the people and to bishops — even to the spiritual — if they should admit any incontinence of gluttony.
But not even among the dead did the admonition cease, where in the rich feaster's case the banquets are tormented, but in the poor man's case the fasts are refreshed — both having Moses and the prophets for their teachers. For Joel too cried out: 'Sanctify a fast and proclaim a solemn service,' foreseeing even then that other apostles and prophets too would sanctify a fast and proclaim observances that tend the care of God. Hence even those who, in worshipping idols and in adorning them for this purpose and in saluting the gods at every hour, play the flatterer, are said to 'perform a service.' But the heathen too acknowledge every humiliation. When the sky is stunned and the year is parched, barefoot processions are proclaimed, the magistrates lay aside their purple, turn the fasces backward, invoke prayer with pointed finger, renew the sacrifice.
And among certain colonies, moreover, by an annual rite, veiled in sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes, they present to their idols a suppliant fasting; the baths and the taverns are closed until the ninth hour. There is but one fire in public, at the altars; no water even in the basins. A Ninevite cessation, I suppose. The Jewish fast, certainly, is celebrated everywhere, when — the temples forsaken — along every shore, wherever in the open, they now at some time send up their prayer to heaven. And although by the garb and ornament of mourning they discredit the office, yet they affect the good faith of abstinence, and sigh for the authority of the lingering star. But it is well that you, in heaping blasphemies upon our dry-diets, equate them with the chaste fast of Isis and of Cybele. I admit the comparison as a testimony.
From this it will be established that ours is divine, which the devil, that emulator of things divine, imitates. From truth a lie is constructed; from religion a superstition is pieced together. Hence you are the more irreligious in proportion as the heathen is the readier. He, in short, slaughters his gluttony to an idol; you will not do so to God. For your God is your belly, your lung a temple, your paunch an altar, your priest the cook, the Holy Spirit the savory reek, the seasonings your charismata, and belching your prophecy. You are old — if we would speak truly — you who indulge gluttony so, and rightly do you boast yourself the elder; I always recognize in you the taste of Esau, the hunter of wild beasts; thus you busy yourself everywhere in tracking down thrushes, thus you come in from the field of your most lax discipline, thus you faint in spirit.
If I offer you lentils reddened with boiled-down must, you will straightway sell all your birthrights; with you charity (agape) boils in the cooking-pots, faith grows warm in the kitchens, hope lies in the dishes. But charity is of the greater account, because through it your young men sleep with the sisters. Appendages of gluttony, forsooth — wantonness and luxury! This partnership the Apostle too knew, when, having first set down 'not in drunkenness nor in revellings,' he added 'nor in chambers and lusts.' It belongs to the eulogy of your gluttony, that with you a double honor is assigned to the presiders in double portions, whereas the Apostle gave a double honor so as to include both the brethren and the prelates.
Who is holier among you, save the one more frequent at banquets, more lavish at catering, better furnished with cups? Rightly do you, men of soul and flesh alone, refuse the things of the Spirit. If the prophets pleased such as these, they were not mine. Why then do you not consistently proclaim: 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die'? — even as we do not hesitate openly to enjoin: 'Let us fast, brothers and sisters, lest perhaps tomorrow we die.' Let us openly vindicate our disciplines. We are sure that those who are in the flesh cannot please God — not, to be sure, in the substance of the flesh, but in its care, in its affection, in its working, in its will. Leanness does not displease us;
for God does not apportion flesh by weight, just as He does not give the Spirit by measure. More easily, perhaps, will a thinner flesh enter through the narrow gate of salvation; more quickly will a lighter flesh be raised again; longer in the grave will a drier flesh endure. Let boxers and Olympic pugilists be fattened. For them, ambition of body is fitting, for whom bodily strength too is necessary — and yet even they grow strong by dry-diets. But ours are other strengths and other powers, even as our contests too are other, wherein the wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of the world, against the spiritual forces of wickedness. Against these we must take our stand not with flesh and blood, but with faith and a robust spirit.
For the rest, a well-fattened Christian will perhaps be more needful to the bears and lions than to God — save that even against the beasts he will have to practice leanness. Here ends the book of Tertullian, On Fasting, against the Psychics.