Chapter III.--The Principle of Fasting Traced Back to Its Earliest Source.
Accordingly we are bound to affirm, before proceeding further, this (principle), which is in danger of being secretly subverted; (namely), of what value in the sight of God this "emptiness" you speak of is: and, first of all, whence has proceeded the rationale itself of earning the favour of God in this way. For the necessity of the observance will then be acknowledged, when the authority of a rationale, to be dated back from the very beginning, shall have shone out to view.
Adam had received from God the law of not tasting "of the tree of recognition of good and evil," with the doom of death to ensue upon tasting. [1018] However, even (Adam) himself at that time, reverting to the condition of a Psychic after the spiritual ecstasy in which he had prophetically interpreted that "great sacrament" [1019] with reference to Christ and the Church, and no longer being "capable of the things which were the Spirit's," [1020] yielded more readily to his belly than to God, heeded the meat rather than the mandate, and sold salvation for his gullet! He ate, in short, and perished; saved (as he would) else (have been), if he had preferred to fast from one little tree: so that, even from this early date, animal faith may recognise its own seed, deducing from thence onward its appetite for carnalities and rejection of spiritualities. I hold, therefore, that from the very beginning the murderous gullet was to be punished with the torments and penalties of hunger. Even if God had enjoined no preceptive fasts, still, by pointing out the source whence Adam was slain, He who had demonstrated the offence had left to my intelligence the remedies for the offence. Unbidden, I would, in such ways and at such times as I might have been able, have habitually accounted food as poison, and taken the antidote, hunger; through which to purge the primordial cause of death--a cause transmitted to me also, concurrently with my very generation; certain that God willed that whereof He nilled the contrary, and confident enough that the care of continence will be pleasing to Him by whom I should have understood that the crime of incontinence had been condemned. Further: since He Himself both commands fasting, and calls "a soul [1021] wholly shattered"--properly, of course, by straits of diet--"a sacrifice;" who will any longer doubt that of all dietary macerations the rationale has been this, that by a renewed interdiction of food and observation of precept the primordial sin might now be expiated, in order that man may make God satisfaction through the self-same causative material through which he had offended, that is, through interdiction of food; and thus, in emulous wise, hunger might rekindle, just as satiety had extinguished, salvation, contemning for the sake of one unlawful more lawful (gratifications)?
[1018] See Gen. ii. 16, 17.
[1019] Comp. Eph. v. 32 with Gen. ii. 23, 24.
[1020] See 1 Cor. ii. 14.
[1021] The reference is to Ps. li. 17 (in LXX. Ps. l. 19).
Chapter IV.--The Objection is Raised, Why, Then, Was the Limit of Lawful Food Extended After the Flood? The Answer to It.
This rationale was constantly kept in the eye of the providence of God--modulating all things, as He does, to suit the exigencies of the times--lest any from the opposite side, with the view of demolishing our proposition, should say: "Why, in that case, did not God forthwith institute some definite restriction upon food? nay, rather, why did He withal enlarge His permission? For, at the beginning indeed, it had only been the food of herbs and trees which He had assigned to man: Behold, I have given you all grass fit for sowing, seeding seed, which is upon the earth; and every tree which hath in itself the fruit of seed fit for sowing shall be to you for food.' [1022] Afterwards, however, after enumerating to Noah the subjection (to him) of all beasts of the earth, and fowls of the heaven, and things moving on earth, and the fish of the sea, and every creeping thing,' He says, They shall be to you for food: just like grassy vegetables have I given (them) you universally: but flesh in the blood of its own soul shall ye not eat.' [1023] For even by this very fact, that He exempts from eating that flesh only the soul' of which is not out-shed through blood,' it is manifest that He has conceded the use of all other flesh." To this we reply, that it was not suitable for man to be burdened with any further special law of abstinence, who so recently showed himself unable to tolerate so light an interdiction--of one single fruit, to wit; that, accordingly, having had the rein relaxed, he was to be strengthened by his very liberty; that equally after the deluge, in the reformation of the human race, (as before it), one law--of abstaining from blood--was sufficient, the use of all things else being allowed. For the Lord had already shown His judgment through the deluge; had, moreover, likewise issued a comminatory warning through the "requisition of blood from the hand of a brother, and from the hand of every beast." [1024] And thus, preministering the justice of judgment, He issued the materials of liberty; preparing through allowance an undergrowth of discipline; permitting all things, with a view to take some away; meaning to "exact more" if He had "committed more;" [1025] to command abstinence since He had foresent indulgence: in order that (as we have said) the primordial sin might be the more expiated by the operation of a greater abstinence in the (midst of the) opportunity of a greater licence.
[1022] Gen. i. 29.
[1023] See Gen. ix. 2-5 (in LXX.).
[1024] See Gen. ix. 5, 6.
[1025] See Luke xii. 48.
Chapter V.--Proceeding to the History of Israel, Tertullian Shows that Appetite Was as Conspicuous Among Their Sins as in Adam's Case. Therefore the Restraints of the Levitical Law Were Imposed.
At length, when a familiar people began to be chosen by God to Himself, and the restoration of man was able to be essayed, then all the laws and disciplines were imposed, even such as curtailed food; certain things being prohibited as unclean, in order that man, by observing a perpetual abstinence in certain particulars, might at last the more easily tolerate absolute fasts. For the first People had withal reproduced the first man's crime, being found more prone to their belly than to God, when, plucked out from the harshness of Egyptian servitude "by the mighty hand and sublime arm" [1026] of God, they were seen to be its lord, destined to the "land flowing with milk and honey;" [1027] but forthwith, stumbled at the surrounding spectacle of an incopious desert sighing after the lost enjoyments of Egyptian satiety, they murmured against Moses and Aaron: "Would that we had been smitten to the heart by the Lord, and perished in the land of Egypt, when we were wont to sit over our jars of flesh and eat bread unto the full! How leddest thou us out into these deserts, to kill this assembly by famine?" [1028] From the self-same belly preference were they destined (at last) to deplore [1029] (the fate of) the self-same leaden of their own and eye-witnesses of (the power of) God, whom, by their regretful hankering after flesh, and their recollection of their Egyptian plenties, they were ever exacerbating: "Who shall feed us with flesh? here have come into our mind the fish which in Egypt we were wont to eat freely, and the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. But now our soul is arid: nought save manna do our eyes see!" [1030] Thus used they, too, (like the Psychics), to find the angelic bread [1031] of xerophagy displeasing: they preferred the fragrance of garlic and onion to that of heaven. And therefore from men so ungrateful all that was more pleasing and appetizing was withdrawn, for the sake at once of punishing gluttony and exercising continence, that the former might be condemned, the latter practically learned.
[1026] Comp. Ps. cxxxvi. 12 (in LXX. cxxxv. 12).
[1027] See Ex. iii. 8.
[1028] See Ex. xvi. 1-3.
[1029] Comp. Num. xx. 1-12 with Ps. cvi. 31-33 (in LXX. cv. 31-33).
[1030] See Num. xi. 1-6.
[1031] See Ps. lxxviii. 25 (in LXX. lxxvii. 25).