Quest. CI. Is it lawful to observe stated times of fasting imposed by others, without extraordinary occasions? And particularly Lent?
Answ. Remember that I here meddle not with the question, how far is it lawful for rulers to impose such fasts on others? save only to say, 1. That it is undoubtedly fit for kings to do it by precepts, and churches by consent, in extraordinary cases of defection, sin, or judgments. 2. That it is undoubtedly sinful usurpation, for either pope or any pretended ecclesiastical, universal rulers, to impose such on the universal church (because there are no universal rulers). Or for a neighbour bishop by usurpation to impose it on a neighbour church. 3. And that it is sinful in all or many churches, to make by their agreements such things to be necessary to their union or communion with their neighbour churches, so that they will take all those for schismatics that differ from them in such indifferent things. But as to the using of such fasts (omitting the imposing) I say,
I. 1. That so great and extraordinary a duty as holy fasting, must not be turned into a mere formality or ceremony.
2. No particular man must be so observant of a public, commanded, anniversary fast, as for it to neglect any duty commanded him by God which is inconsistent with it. As to rejoice or keep a thanksgiving in Lent, upon an extraordinary obliging cause; to keep the Lord’s day in Lent, as a day of thanksgiving and rejoicing; to preserve our own health, &c. It is not lawful in obedience to man, to fast so much, or use such diet, as is like to destroy our lives or health; these being not so far put into the power of man; nor can man dispense with us as to the duty of self-preservation. If God himself require us not to offer him our lives and health needlessly, as an acceptable sacrifice, nor ever maketh self-destruction our duty, no nor any thing that is not for man’s own good; then we are not to believe without very clear proof that either prince or prelates have more power than ever God doth use himself.
3. Such an anniversary fast as is meet for the remembrance of some great sin or judgment, if commanded, is to be kept, both for the reason of it, and for the authority of the commander. For, 1. It is not unlawful as anniversary. (For, (1.) It is not forbidden, and, (2.) There may be just occasion. Some arbitrarily keep an anniversary fast on the day of their nativity (as I have long done); and some on the day that they fell into some great sin; and some on the day of the death of a friend, or of some personal, domestic, or national calamity; and none of this is forbidden.) 2. And that which is not unlawful in itself, is not therefore unlawful to be done because it is commanded; seeing obedience to superiors is our duty and not our sin, unless in sinful things.
4. Whether it be lawful or meet to commemorate Christ’s sufferings by anniversary fasts, is next to be considered.
II. As for Lent in particular, we must distinguish, 1. Between the ancient Lent, and the later Lent. 2. Between keeping it on a civil account, and on a religious. 3. Between true fasting, and change of diet. 4. Between the imitation of Christ’s forty days’ fasting, and the mere commemoration of it. Which premised I conclude,
1. The keeping a true fast or abstinence from food, for forty days, on what account soever, being impossible, or self-murder, is not to be attempted.
2. The imitation of Christ in his forty days’ fasting is not to be attempted or pretended to; because his miraculous works were not done for our imitation. And it is presumption for us to pretend to such a power as is necessary to miracles; or yet to make any essays at such an imitation, any more than at the raising of the dead.
3. The pretending of a fast when men do but change their diet, flesh for fish, fruit, sweetmeats, &c. is but hypocritical and ridiculous; most poor labourers, and temperate ministers, do live all the year on a more flesh-denying diet, and in greater abstinence, than many papists do in Lent, or on their fasting days. And what a ridiculous dispute is it to hear, e. g. a Calvin that never eateth but one small meal a day for many years, to plead against the keeping of the popish fasts, and their clergy call him voracious, and carnal, and an epicure, and plead for fasting as holy mortification, who eat as many meals and as much meat on a Lent day or fasting day, as Calvin did in three feasting days; and drink as much wine in a Lent, as he in twenty years! Sure I am I know many such on both sides; some that eat but a small meal a day, and never drink wine at all, and others that drink wine daily, and eat of many dishes at a meal, and that to the full, and of the sweetest, as fish, fruits, &c. yet rail at the former for not fasting as they do. So delusory are the outward appearances, and so false the pretensions of the carnal sort!
4. The ancient Lent consisted first of one day (Good Friday) alone; and after that of three days, and then of six, and at last it came up to forty. (Of which read Dallæus ubi supra at large.)
5. None can question the lawfulness of and obedient keeping of such a civil Lent fast as our statutes command, for the vending of fish, and for the breed of cattle; so be it no bodily necessity or greater duty be against it.
6. It is not unlawful for those that cannot totally fast, yet to use more abstinence and a more mortifying sort of diet than ordinary, for the exercises of repentance and mortification, in due time.
7. If authority shall appoint such a mortifying, abstemious course upon lawful or tolerable grounds and ends, I will obey them, if they peremptorily require it, when my health or some greater duty forbiddeth it not.
8. As for the commanding such an abstinence, as in Lent, not in imitation, but bare commemoration of Christ’s forty days’ fast, I would not command it if it were in my power; but being peremptorily commanded, I cannot prove it unlawful to obey, with the afore-mentioned exceptions.
9. It was anciently held a crime to fast on the Lord’s day, even in Lent; and I take that day to be separated by Christ and the Holy Ghost for a church festival or day of thanksgiving; therefore I will not keep it as a fast, though I were commanded, unless in such an extraordinary necessity, as aforesaid.
Of pilgrimages, saints, relics, and shrines, temples, of their miracles, of praying to angels, to saints, for the dead, purgatory, of the pope’s pardons, indulgences, dispensations; of the power of true pastors to forgive sins, with a multitude of such cases, which are commonly handled in our controversial writers against the papists, I must thither refer the reader for a solution, because the handling of all such particular cases would swell my book to a magnitude beyond my intention, and make this part unsuitable to the rest.
2 Chron. xx. 3; Ezra viii. 21; Jonah iii. 5; Zech. viii. 19; Joel ii. 15. Read Dallæus’s “Treatise de Jejuniis.”
Isa. lviii. 3, 5-8.