Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Tertullian: Part Fourth/On Fasting/Chapter 17

Chapter XVII.&#8212;Conclusion.

&#8220;Old&#8221; you are, if we will say the truth, you who are so indulgent to appetite, and justly do you vaunt your &#8220;priority:&#8221;&#160; always do I recognise the savour of Esau, the hunter of wild beasts:&#160; so unlimitedly studious are you of catching fieldfares, so do you come from &#8220;the field&#8221; of your most lax discipline, so faint are you in spirit. &#160; If I offer you a paltry lentile dyed red with must well boiled down, forthwith you will sell all your &#8220;primacies:&#8221;&#160; with you &#8220;love&#8221; shows its fervour in sauce-pans, &#8220;faith&#8221; its warmth in kitchens, &#8220;hope&#8221; its anchorage in waiters; but of greater account is &#8220;love,&#8221; because that is the means whereby your young men sleep with their sisters!&#160; Appendages, as we all know, of appetite are lasciviousness and voluptuousness.&#160; Which alliance the apostle withal was aware of; and hence, after premising, &#8220;Not in drunkenness and revels,&#8221; he adjoined, &#8220;nor in couches and lusts.&#8221;

To the indictment of your appetite pertains (the charge) that &#8220;double honour&#8221; is with you assigned to your presiding (elders) by double shares (of meat and drink); whereas the apostle has given them &#8220;double honour&#8221; as being both brethren and officers. &#160; Who, among you, is superior in holiness, except him who is more frequent in banqueting, more sumptuous in catering, more learned in cups?&#160; Men of soul and flesh alone as you are, justly do you reject things spiritual.&#160; If the prophets were pleasing to such, my (prophets) they were not.&#160; Why, then, do not you constantly preach, &#8220;Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die?&#8221; just as we do not hesitate manfully to command, &#8220;Let us fast, brethren and sisters, lest to-morrow perchance we die.&#8221;&#160; Openly let us vindicate our disciplines.&#160; Sure we are that &#8220;they who are in the flesh cannot please God;&#8221; not, of course, those who are in the substance of the flesh, but in the care, the affection, the work, the will, of it.&#160; Emaciation displeases not us; for it is not by weight that God bestows flesh, any more than He does &#8220;the Spirit by measure.&#8221; &#160; More easily, it may be, through the &#8220;strait gate&#8221; of salvation will slenderer flesh enter; more speedily will lighter flesh rise; longer in the sepulchre will drier flesh retain its firmness.&#160; Let Olympic cestus-players and boxers cram themselves to satiety.&#160; To them bodily ambition is suitable to whom bodily strength is necessary; and yet they also strengthen themselves by xerophagies.&#160; But ours are other thews and other sinews, just as our contests withal are other; we whose &#8220;wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the world&#8217;s power, against the spiritualities of malice.&#8221;&#160; Against these it is not by robustness of flesh and blood, but of faith and spirit, that it behoves us to make our antagonistic stand.&#160; On the other hand, an over-fed Christian will be more necessary to bears and lions, perchance, than to God; only that, even to encounter beasts, it will be his duty to practise emaciation.