Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/181

Rh the fast-day such portion of their weekly duty as was least exhausting. Yet, after all, one rule will not apply to all, young or old, in strong health or weakly, engaged in active or in sedentary duties, of full or spare habits; as, again, some of the ends of fasting will vary according to the periods of life, habits, or temperaments; and, with the ends, so will the modes also, or degree of fasting. "As fasting hath divers ends," says Bishop Taylor, speaking of private fasting, "so has it divers laws." And for the temptation peculiar to youth, he remarks, "a sudden, sharp, and violent fast" will often only aggravate the evil. What is then needed is, "a state of fasting, a diet of fasting, a daily lessening our meat and drink, and a choosing such a course of diet as may make the least preparation for the lusts of the body." This, although belonging directly to private fasts, is so far to our purpose, as indicative of his judgment, that the rules of fasting must be adapted to our several cases; and it was with this view, that, in the second edition of my tract, I alluded (p. 23) to the ξηροφαγια, the less rigid fast of the ancient church, in hopes that those who, from ill health, were unequal to the harder fasts, might yet not think themselves excluded from the privilege of fasting. And if the fast serve no other purpose than to distinguish the day from ordinary days, by "eating no pleasant bread," yet even this degree of fasting, where no other is admissible, can be, and has been, blessed by God. The rules which I would recommend to one commencing the observance of the church's fasts would be:—1. To abstain, as far as possible, from all mixed society at meals on those days, both as likely to be inconsistent with the frame of mind, which it is the object of the fast to cherish, and as tempting us (were it but to escape notice) to break our rule. 2. Not to tie himself down to any severe rule at first, as to the degree of fasting; for as our bodies have been inured to ease, so must they gradually be inured to seasonable austerities. If we lay down too strict a rule, it may, in reality, be too much for us at first, and so we may be tempted