eousness. But the true fast is this: do nothing wicked in thy life, but serve God with a pure mind; and keep his commandments and walk according to his precepts, nor suffer any wicked desire to enter into thy mind." 8 We may safely infer from this passage, that the Stations were entirely destitute of apostolical authority; an opinion which certainly prevailed also in Tertullian's time." Notwithstanding this, the angel of Hermas proceeds to point out, both by parable and precept, the excellence of going beyond the commands of God; and sums up the whole in these words," Keep the commandments of God and thou shalt be approved, and shalt be written in the number of those that keep his commandments. But if, besides those things which the Lord hath commanded, thou shalt add some good thing, thou shalt purchase to thyself a greater dignity, and shalt be more in favour with the Lord than thou shouldst otherwise have been." "The Station, therefore, is good and pleasing, and acceptable to the Lord."

Now where, in the Bible, I shall be glad to know, did Hermas or his angel discover that a mere act of bodily mortification is, in itself, acceptable to the God of love? -Every thing of this nature is propounded, throughout both the Old and New Testaments, as means conducive to the spiritual improvement of him who performs them; not that the Almighty takes pleasure in the maceration and sufferings of his creatures. I am equally ignorant of any scriptural authority for the opinion, that it is in the power of man to exceed the commands of God. For the holiness of God himself is the pattern and exemplar which they

8 This passage is a strong presumption in favour of the high antiquity of the book, which some have been inclined to doubt.

9 Stationes nostras, ut in serum constitutas novitatis nomine incusant. -Adv. Psy., c. 10. He goes on to inform us that they were then newly reappointed by the paraclete Montamus.

set forth for our imitation; "be ye holy, for I am holy:" he then that goes about to add to them, proposes to be holier than God: a notion as absurd as it is impious. But again, we assert that such an addition would be sinful if it were possible; for the state of mind which God requires in his servants is, an earnest desire to fulfil his revealed will in all things; and consequently, to exceed the commandment, is just as much an act of disobedience as to fall short of it. But why seek the living among the dead? Austerities have evidently, according to this writer, an abstract and absolute value with God; and, therefore, the more frequent their repetition, the larger the amount of merit to the ascetic; and these notions he found, not in the doctrines of the Gospel, but in the philosophy of Pythagoras.

To Tertullian we are indebted for a further illustration of the progress of this error in the church. As we are not now engaged in bringing together all the passages from each author which bear upon our subject, but only so much of them as shall suffice to establish the existence of the doctrines we point out and endeavour to combat, we merely premise, that many very strong recommendations of fasting and abstinence are scattered over the works of this father, and proceed at once to a brief epitome of his tract, adversus Psychicos. He commences this furious hortative to fasting in all its branches auspiciously; with a passage far too indecent either to translate or quote.10 To such a

10 He is tracing the connection between the multi-vorantia and multinubentia of the sensualists (xxoi ;) by which very courteous title, he distinguishes all those who did not keep the exact number of fasts prescribed by Montanus; nor hold with that crazy impostor, or enthusiast, that second marriages were adultery.-C. 1. Clement of Alexandria, who was not a believer, speaks of this name in a manner which shows, pretty plainly, that he did not at all enjoy his title of honour.-See 4 Strom., § 13.

frenzy does this raving fanatic lash himself, in favour of the inordinate catalogue of fasts prescribed by Montanus, and his two prophetesses, and against those who presume to curtail, by a single moment, their full duration, that, before he quits this part of his subject, his words, as well as his sentiments, are licentious. When he becomes quoteable, we find the points upon which the orthodox had attacked the Montanists to be, first,-the observance of jejunia propria, peculiar fasts; that is, fasts not prescribed by the universal church :-second, prolonging the Station-fast to the evening, instead of terminating it at the ninth hour:-third, in the fasts called Xerophagice," wherein the orthodox abstained only from the flesh and wine, the Montanists prohibited also all juicy fruits, and the use of the bath. Here, then, is a complete schism in the church, the two sections of which revile each other with a most polemical fluency of foul names; the subject of their dispute being, the number of fasts, and the mode of their observance, required of Christians; and both loudly professing themselves, all the while, the zealous disciples of him whose only precept concerning fasting, was, "When ye fast be not as the hypocrites are; for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast but thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy father which is in secret."12 When we further consider, that all this was enacted, scarcely a century and a half after the first propagation of Christ's religion, we have made out a case of fatuity, perfectly unaccountable,

:

11 This fast was a restriction to dry food only, as its name imports.The origin both of this and the station-fast was really, the discipline of Pythagoras and the Essenes.

12 Matt. vi. 16-18.

in my opinion, upon any merely natural principle; and to which (except in our present subject) we shall hardly find a parallel.

He proceeds to recount the arguments of his opponents, who regarded the passion-week fast only as obligatory upon Christians; the rest as merely voluntary. As they are, for the most part, founded upon pertinent passages in the New Testament, they are, of course, unanswerable; 13 the summing up which he puts into the mouth of the adversary, is really admirable :— "I will believe with all that is within me; I will love God and my neighbour as myself: on these two precepts hang all the law and the prophets, and not on the emptiness of my stomach and bowels." In his attempt to answer this, he sets out with the somewhat startling assertion, that fasting is in itself valuable and available with God;14 and and he then endeavours to explain the reason: it is as follows;-" Adam ate, and fell; we must fast, that we may be recovered.-Adam's sin consisted in eating, all men must abstain from eating, that they may expiate that offence; man must atone to God in the same matter as that wherein he first offended; that is, by abstinence."15____ Though all this has more the air of a figure of speech than of an argument, he applies it strictly to the latter use: he adduces it in proof of his premise, that fasting is available and acceptable with God; and upon this he grounds the whole of his reasoning. Moreover, it must

13 Acts xv. 28, 29; Gal. iv. 9, 10; Isa. lviii. 4, 5; 1 Cor. viii. 8; Matt. xv. 11.

14 Valet apud deum inanitas ista, c. 3.

15 Quis jam dubitabit omnium erga victus macerationum hanc fuisse rationem, qua rursus interdicto cibo et observato pracepto primordiale jam delictum expiaretur; ut homo per eandem materiam causæ satis Deo faciat per quam offenderat : id est per cibi interdictionem.-Idem.

be borne in mind, that in thus arguing, our author is by no means bringing forward any of the peculiarities of Montanism, by adopting a course of reasoning which the orthodox would have condemned. This error stands charged, with pushing the then prevalent notions of discipline to an insane extreme, rather than, with originating opinions in themselves erroneous.-The orthodox would have applied exactly the same argument in defence of their prescription, against the laxer heretics. All this we infer from the circumstance, that our author was never accused of heresy on this account; far from it, his mode of defence was admired and imitated, long after the ordinances in whose support he applied it were forgotten.16 Fasting, therefore, which the New Testament enjoined only with a regard to the spiritual advancement of the believer, and which Hermas in the first century termed, a good thing to be added to the commandments, has acquired in the second century, by as unequivocal an acknowledgment as words can convey, that tangible value with God, which we have already endeavoured to show that the notion of the preceding period assigned to it. All allusion to the spiritual state of the devotee, is at an end, or nearly so. -Fasting is not a means of Grace, but an expiative offering to God, for the sin of our first parents in eating the forbidden fruit, which is efficacious for the removal of the taint and corruption, which our nature has thereby contracted.-Evidently, therefore, the more frequent and severe the fast, the more perfect the purification of the devotee! Are we ascertaining the tenets of the followers of the God of Christianity or of the gods of Hindooism?

We glance at the remainder of the tract, in order to confirm our account of his leading argument, as well as to

16 See above page, 138.