CHAPTER I. — Your observance, beloved, we know to be so devout that you cultivate your souls not only with lawful but also with voluntary fastings. Nevertheless, to this zeal there is to be added also the exhortation of our admonition, so that if there are any who are more sluggish in this exercise, they may at least in these days obediently join themselves to the common abstinence, in which it behoves us more attentively to celebrate the most sacred custom, that through the humility of the fast we may merit divine aid against all our enemies. For it is a matter of principal importance, which we both enjoin from authority and persuade from charity:
that, the liberty of eating being a little restrained, we may apply ourselves to the chastisement of our bodies and to the nourishment of the poor; for he who refreshes them feeds his own soul, and changes temporal repasts into eternal delights. CHAPTER II. — In place, therefore, of evil desires let the increases of holy longings succeed. Let iniquity cease, but let not justice be idle. Let him who suffers no oppressor feel someone as a helper. For it is too little not to take away what belongs to another, unless you bestow also what is your own. We are under the eyes of the just Judge, who knows how great a faculty of doing good He has given to each. He does not wish His gifts to be idle, who so distributes the measures of the mystical talents to His servants, that He might increase what was entrusted to him who had liberally paid it out;
and cause him who had barrenly kept it to lose it (Matt. xxv, 28; Luke xix, 26). And therefore, beloved, because it behoves us to celebrate the fast of the seventh month, we admonish your holiness that we fast on the fourth and sixth day of the week; and on the Sabbath let us likewise keep vigil at the blessed Apostle Peter's, that by his interceding merits we may deserve to be released from all tribulations: through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns unto the ages of ages. Amen.