offended in his palate, he may choose to fast only; if he have sinned in softness and in his touch, he may choose to lie hard, or work hard, and use sharp inflictions but although this discipline be proper and particular, yet because the sorrow is of the whole man, no sense must rejoice, or be with any study or purpose feasted and entertained softly. This rule is intended to relate to the solemn days appointed for repentance publicly or privately: besides which in the whole course of our life, even in the midst of our most festival and freer joys, we may sprinkle some single instances and acts of self-condemning, or punishing; as to refuse a pleasant morsel or a delicious draught, with a tacit remembrance of the sin that now returns to displease my spirit. And though these actions be single, there is no indecency in them, because a man may abate of his ordinary liberty and bold freedom with great prudence, so he does it without singularity in himself, or trouble to others; but he may not abate of his solemn sorrow: that may be caution; but this would be softness, effeminacy, and indecency.

7. When fasting is an act of mortification, that is, is intended to subdue a bodily lust, or the fondness of strong and impatient appetites, it must not be a sudden, sharp, and violent fast, but a state of fasting, a diet of fasting, a daily lessening our portion of meat and drink, and a choosing such a coarse diet which may make the least preparation for the lusts of the body.

8. Fasting alone will not cure this devil, though it helps much towards it: but it must not therefore be neglected, but assisted by all the proper instruments of remedy against this unclean spirit; and what it is unable to do alone, in company with other instruments, and God's blessing upon them, it may effect.

9. All fasting, for whatsoever end it be undertaken, must be done without any opinion of the necessity of the thing itself, without censuring others, with all hu

mility, in order to the proper end; and just as a man takes physic, of which no man hath reason to be proud, and no man thinks it necessary, but because he is in sickness, or in danger and disposition to it.

10. All fasts ordained by lawful authority are to be observed in order to the same purposes to which they are enjoined; and to be accompanied with actions of the same nature, just as it is in private fasts: for there is no other difference, but that in public our superiors choose for us, what in private we do for ourselves.

11. Fasts ordained by lawful authority are not to be neglected, because alone they cannot do the thing in order to which they were enjoined. It may be one day of humiliation will not obtain the blessing, or alone kill the lust; yet it must not be despised, if it can do any thing towards it. An act of fasting is an act of self-denial; and though it do not produce the habit, yet it is a good act.

12. When the principal end, why a fast is publicly prescribed, is obtained by some other instrument in a particular person, yet that person so eased is not freed from the fasts of the church by that alone, if those fasts can prudently serve any other end of religion, as that of prayer, or repentance, or mortification of some other appetite for when it is instrumental to any end of the Spirit, it is freed from superstition, and then we must have some other reason to quit us from the obligation, or that alone will not do it.

13. When the fast publicly commanded, by reason of some indisposition in the particular person, cannot operate to the end of the commandment; yet the avoiding offence, and the complying with public order, is reason enough to make the obedience to be necessary. For he that is otherwise disobliged, as when the reason of the law ceases as to his particular, yet remains still obliged, if he cannot do otherwise without scandal but this is an obligation of charity, not of justice.

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14. All fasting is to be used with prudence and charity for there is no end to which fasting serves, but may be obtained by other instruments: and therefore it must at no hand be made an instrument of scruple, or become an enemy to our health, or be imposed upon persons that are sick or aged, or to whom it is in any sense uncharitable, such as are wearied travellers; or to whom, in the whole kind of it, it is useless, such as are women with child, poor people, and little children. But in these cases, the Church hath made provision, and inserted caution into her laws; and they are to be reduced to practice according to custom, and the sentence of prudent persons, with great latitude and without niceness and curiosity: having this in our first care, that we secure our virtue, and next that we secure our health, that we may the better exercise the labours of virtue, lest out of too much austerity we bring ourselves to that condition, that it be necessary to be indulgent to softness, ease, and extreme tenderness.

15. Let not intemperance be the prologue or the epilogue to your fast, lest the fast be so far from taking off any thing of the sin, that it be an occasion to increase it and therefore when the fast is done, be careful that no supervening act of gluttony or excessive drinking unhallow the religion of the passed day; but eat temperately, according to the proportion of other meals, lest gluttony keep either of the gates to abstinence.

The Benefits of Fasting.

He that undertakes to enumerate the benefits of fasting, may in the next page also reckon all the benefits of physic: for fasting is not to be commended as a duty, but as an instrument; and in that sense no man can reprove it, or undervalue it, but he that knows neither spiritual arts nor spiritual necessities. "The soul that is greatly vexed, which goeth stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry.

soul, shall give thee praise and righteousness, O Lord 1."

SECTION VI.

Of keeping Festivals and Days holy to the Lord: particularly, the Lord's Day.

TRUE natural religion, that which was common to all nations and ages, did principally rely upon four great propositions: 1. That there is one God; 2. That God is nothing of those things which we see; 3. That God takes care of all things below, and governs all the world; 4. That he is the great Creator of all things without himself: and according to these, were framed the four first precepts of the decalogue. In the first, the unity of the Godhead is expressly affirmed. In the second, his invisibility and immateriality. In the third is affirmed God's government and providence, by avenging them that swear falsely by his name; by which also his omniscience is declared. In the fourth commandment he proclaims himself the maker of heaven and earth: for in memory of God's rest from the work of six days, the seventh was hallowed into a Sabbath; and the keeping it was a confessing God to be the great maker of heaven and earth, and consequently to this, it also was a confession of his goodness, his omnipotence and his wisdom; all which were written with a sunbeam in the great book of the creature.

So long as the law of the Sabbath was bound upon God's people, so long God would have that to be the solemn manner of confessing these attributes: but when "the priesthood being changed, there was a change also of the law," the great duty remained un

1 Baruch 2. 18.

alterable in changed circumstances. We are eternally bound to confess God Almighty to be the maker of heaven and earth; but the manner of confessing it is changed from a rest or a doing nothing to a speaking something, from a day to a symbol, from a ceremony to a substance, from a Jewish rite to a Christian duty : we profess it in our creed, we confess it in our lives; we describe it by every line of our life, by every action of duty, by faith, and trust, and obedience: and we do also, upon great reason, comply with the Jewish manner of confessing the creation, so far as it is instrumental to a real duty. We keep one day in seven, and so confess the manner and circumstance of the creation; and we rest also, that we may tend holy duties so imitating God's rest better than the Jew, who lay upon his face from evening to evening, and could not by stripes or wounds be raised up to steer the ship in a great storm. God's rest was not a natural cessation he who could not labour, could not be said to rest: but God's rest is to be understood to be a beholding and a rejoicing in his work finished: and therefore we truly represent God's rest, when we confess and rejoice in God's works and God's glory.

This the Christian church does upon every day, but especially upon the Lord's day, which she hath set apart for this and all other offices of religion, being determined to this day by the resurrection of our dearest Lord, it being the first day of joy the church ever had. And now upon the Lord's day we are not tied to the rest of the Sabbath, but to all the work of the Sabbath; and we are to abstain from bodily labour, not because it is a direct duty to us, as it was to the Jews, but because it is necessary in order to our duty, that we attend to the offices of religion.

The observation of the Lord's day differs nothing from the observation of the Sabbath in the matter of religion, but in the manner. They differ in the ceremony and external rite: rest with them was the principal; with us it is the accessory. They differ in the