Fides Catholica, or, The doctrine of the Catholick Church in eighteen grand ordinances referring to the Word, sacraments and prayer, in purity, number and nature, catholically maintained, and publickly taught against hereticks of all sorts : with the solutions of many proper and profitable questions sutable to to [sic] the nature of each ordinance treated of / by Wil. Annand ...

SECT. I. 1 The nature of it.

1 It is an holy and religious abstinence. 2 From the exercises and comforts of this ontward life. 3 To witness the humiliation of the body. And, 4. Fitting of the soul for more fervency in prayer.

It is an holy and religious abstinence; there is a natural ab∣stinence or fast for the health of the body prescribed often by Physicians; there is a civil abstinence or fast for the good of the Common-wealth prescribed sometime by the civil Magistrate: but the fast that we are to behold is holy and re∣ligious, prescribed by the Church for the good of the soul.

Not that fasting in it self considered, or abstinence abstract∣edly taken, is holy, or any essential part of religion, but as a means or way to make the soul holy or religious, that con∣ducing to the ends hereafter to be mentioned. It hath holi∣ness in its eye, and holiness in its desire, and therefore may be called a holy abstinence.

2. From the exercises and comforts of this outward life; these are the things we must abstain from in the time of our fast: (alwayes having a respect to decency and frailty.) as

• 1. From bodily labor, Levit. 23. 30. this is properly for that fast that is appointed for a certain day, Ioel 1. 14.
• 2. From food, Ionah 3.7. this is sometimes total, as ab∣staining

• from God altogether, 2 Sam. 3.35. and sometimes partial, abstaining from pleasant or delightfull feeding, ac∣cording to the length of the fast, Dan. 10.2, 3. David there will eat nothing till the Sun go down, and Daniel here will eat no pleasant bread for three weeks.
• From sleep, 2 Sam. 12.16. The body even in this may be afflicted, for it's frequent sinning in that passion.
• 4. From attire, Exod. 33. this came into the world by sin, and therefore ought to be laid aside, yet herein all apparell is not to be put aside, nor in the other is all sleep to be forborn, we must in these have respect to frailty, and necessity: David in the one place, Will lye all night upon the earth and the Is∣raelites for that day, (in the other place) will not put on their ornaments, so the King of Nineveh put off his robe, Jonah 3.6.
• 5. From the marriage-bed, Ioel 2.16. 1 Cor. 7. 8.
• 6. From sports and recreations, Levit. 23. 39. A fast is a Sabbath, a day of rest, and therefore what is required for the one, is to be performed on the other▪ Isa. 38.13, 19.

3. To witness the humiliation of the body: here is one end of fasting. But what shall we appear unto men to fast? this rather hath an eye to publick then to private abstinence, and deserves rather to have God for a witness then man; he knows the body sinned; the heart hath been lifted up, and the eyes lofty; the tongue hath spoken proud things in its hea••ing, and the hands of man are not clean in his sight. Man is de∣filed by that which befals him in the night, and his ears are made impure by what he hears in the day; Let God therefore that knows thou hast sinned by eating, and by strange ap∣parrel, see that thou art humble for it, either by thy fasting or more sober diet, spare not thy stomack for its crying, and let thy pride know that this day is not for ornaments, but for courser or plainer apparel, Ionah 3. 6. Pity not thy back, if it have to supply necessity.

4. For the fitting of the soul for more fervency in prayer, this is the special end we are to have in this day of fasting, unto which all the other doth but conduce, the rest are but servants waiting upon this:

Fasting hath in all ages of the Church been used to, or for three great duties, as

• 1. For Repentance, and so it looks backwards; and this in reason calls for an abstinence from all carnal delights▪ being a part of that holy revenge the soul taketh upon it self, for sinning against the Almighty in the using of those sports whe∣ther in measure or in nature unlawfull, 2 Cor. 7.11. Quem poenitet peccasse, poene est innocens.
• 2. For mortification, and so it looks forward; to this we must come only by degrees. He that would subdue lusts, must not fast long nor much; a long fast will but make him eat the more the next meal, and those vessels of sin will be filled as so on as any other parts of the body: this devil of conscience will not be cast out by an act, but by a state of abstinence, a dye •• of fasting, a dayly lessening our portion and of meat and drink, but this alone will not cast out those legions of lusts, and therefore fasting is used
• 3. For prayer, and so it hath reference to the present time, this may be short and true, as the misseing of a meal or two, when men are not overcharged with surfeiting and drunken∣ness, they are then in fit case and condition to watch and pray. The Jews are said to eat nothing upon the Sabbath day untill they had performed their devotion, which was about the sixth hour, which began at nine of the clock. We find also and know that many godly people will neither eat nor drink upon the Sabbath day morning, finding meat an hindrance to that in∣ten siveness of devotion, that they desire to be acted by, and also many will take the holy communion fasting. At which ordinance, as God requires pure hearts and hands, they endea∣vour to come with clear heads and empty stomacks, that they may so much the more be like the Angels of God, quitted from the loads and burdens; I had almost said bonds of the flesh.

But this intrencheth upon the ends of fasting, which accord∣ing to our method we come now in some sort to discover.