De convenientia institutorum Romanae Ecclesiae cum Evangelica libertate

1. There is another institution of the Church which many, devoted to gluttony and the belly, consider to depart from evangelical liberty: namely, the prescription of fasting and abstinence.

What sort of freedom, they ask, can we say a person has if he is not even free to eat whenever he pleases? Indeed, he is bound by the laws of his forebears to certain fasts and to a fixed rule of abstinence on appointed days.

2. But if they kept in mind that Christian liberty¹, as we explained above, is that which tears us away from slavery to sin² in accordance with the Apostle's words to the Galatians:³ You were called to liberty, brothers; only do not turn liberty into an occasion for the flesh, they would plainly see that whatever helps remove and eradicate slavery to sin⁴ does not hinder Christian liberty, but rather wins it greater favor and adornment.⁵ Who does not know that a temporary interruption of those things that foster lust is especially⁶ suited and useful for virtue and freedom of the soul? And who, unless mad, would deny that the appetites of the flesh are nourished by food and drink? “Without Ceres and Bacchus,” says the comic poet,⁷ “Venus grows cold.” Fasting, then, by which we sometimes abstain from food, does not oppose evangelical liberty.

3. Moreover, fasting also helps us toward another end by which we are greatly raised up to virtue: the apprehension of divine things. Daniel writes in chapter 10 of his prophecy⁸ that he received a revelation from God after fasting for three weeks. The Magi among the Persians, most assiduous of all men in their studies, lived on no kind of food except flour and vegetables when they sought to raise their minds to investigate heavenly matters. The Gymnosophists, most experienced in every branch of knowledge,⁹ abstained from meat. Add another reason to confirm fasting's usefulness. After we violated the divine law, to our misfortune, fasting became a most powerful remedy for obtaining pardon. In chapter 2 of Joel,¹⁰ the Lord says: Turn to me with all your heart, in fasting, weeping, and mourning. The Ninevites too, as the book of the prophet Jonah recounts,¹¹¹² turned God's anger away from themselves by fasting. Hear also Augustine, who gathers the whole fruit of fasting in a certain sermon:¹³ “Fasting,” he says, “purifies the soul, lifts the mind, subjects one's own flesh to the spirit, makes the heart contrite and humbled, dispels the mists of desire, extinguishes the fires of lust, and kindles the light of chastity.” The Church also sings in the Preface:¹⁴ “By bodily fasting you restrain vices, raise the mind, and bestow virtue and rewards.” If, then, we fast under the laws of the Roman Pontiff and the ancient observance of the Church, and likewise abstain from meat on certain days, we do nothing against Christian liberty. Rather, we use remedies to preserve it.

4. What will you say obstructs evangelical liberty: something Christ, the Apostles, and the holiest Fathers observed with the greatest zeal? The Gospel records that Christ fasted forty days and forty nights.¹⁵¹⁶ In his second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11,¹⁷ the Apostle boasts that he endured many hardships in frequent fastings. In his first letter to the same people, chapter 9,¹⁸ he says: I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. We are also urged to fast in these words in the same second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 6:¹⁹²⁰ Let us commend ourselves as God's ministers in great endurance, in labors, in vigils, in fastings. Of the other Apostles, Acts chapter 13 says:²¹ As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said to them, etc. And chapter 14 reads:²² When they had appointed presbyters for them in each church and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord. As for the ancient Fathers, hermits, and monks, it is so well known that they often fasted that there is no need for me to recount it.²³

5. The Lutherans may perhaps say: “We do not condemn abstaining from meat for a time, nor voluntary fasts; we condemn the law that imposes the obligation to fast.”²⁴ For they insist that unless we fast in accordance with the enactments of the Roman Pontiffs, they would have us guilty of eternal damnation. But this is not in keeping with Christ's Gospel, apostolic teaching, or Christian liberty. For in Luke chapter 5,²⁵ Christ Jesus, our lawgiver, says: The children of the bridegroom cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them.²⁶ Who besides Christians are to be called the children of the bridegroom?²⁷ And how long is the bridegroom with them? Is he not with them continually, indeed until the end of the age? In Matthew chapter 15 it is also said:²⁸ It is not what enters the mouth that defiles a person. Therefore, when the Lord sends his disciples out to preach, he says: Eat whatever is set before you.²⁹ Paul too³⁰ speaks to the same effect in his letter to the Romans, chapter 14:³¹ The kingdom of God is not food and drink—which the Gloss rightly interprets to mean that justice consists neither in abstaining nor in eating. In his first letter to Timothy, chapter 4,³² he also says: Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.

6. Although such statements seem to overturn every law of abstinence and fasting, they do not do so when rightly explained³³ and examined in depth. In the first place, they lay a sandy and unstable foundation; it is therefore no wonder that their buildings are full of cracks³⁴ and threaten ruin on every side. For they argue that no obligation of abstinence is imposed on us except by human law—a claim that is plainly false and wholly unreasonable.

I would ask them: does not the multitude of people need some remedy to restrain the disorders of the soul?³⁵ If this is denied, Paul's statement³⁶ in Galatians chapter 5³⁷ is immediately at hand: The flesh, he says, lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to one another, so that you do not do whatever you wish. If, then, we need some medicine against the desires of the flesh, lest they overwhelm the integrity of the spirit, natural reason's law surely requires us to value abstinence in proportion to how necessary we find it for quenching the desires of the flesh.³⁸ We are thus urged to some measure of abstinence not only by human ordinances but also by natural law. For if we consider the nature of fasting and abstinence by a common principle—that is, as a temporary interruption of food by which the flesh is restrained and held back, as if by a bridle, from rebelling rashly against the spirit—we are not wholly free to choose: the law of nature binds us to fast. But if we consider the seasons of fasting and a definite, prescribed measure of abstinence, these were established not by natural law but by the enactments of our forebears and the Church's long-standing custom.³⁹ Just as the laws of secular rulers set a measure for observing the precepts of natural law in temporal matters, according to the circumstances of times and people, so it belongs to the spiritual ruler to regulate those precepts of natural law that serve the faithful's welfare in spiritual matters. Thus, just as he does with other Christian practices, he establishes a measure of fasting and abstinence for the faithful's salvation.

7. What they go on to babble—that the children of the bridegroom cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them—does not prejudice our account. Chrysostom thinks that this refers only to Christ's disciples, not to all Christians.⁴⁰ Since their minds were still weak and their spiritual digestion delicate, they were not to be deterred by the austerity of fasting while the bridegroom himself was present; rather, they were to be strengthened by a certain sweet and gentle kindness. Jerome, however,⁴¹ interprets it as referring to the fast of the old observances. Those who were to be enlightened by the new grace of the Holy Spirit were not to be bound to the old observances of fasting. Augustine, for his part, holds that there are two kinds of fasting:⁴² one of mourning, the other of rejoicing. The first is borne with a bitter reckoning of one's sins and the bitterness of this present life. The other is joined to a kind of spiritual joy of the soul, when, having tasted the spirit, all flesh becomes tasteless. Augustine assigns the fast of rejoicing to perfect men—that is, those who enjoy nearly continuous contemplation of divine things—but does not assign to them the fast of mourning and bitterness, because they delight in the nearly continual spiritual presence of the bridegroom. Hence, where Luke's Gospel says:⁴³ The children of the bridegroom cannot fast, Matthew's Gospel reads:⁴⁴ The children of the bridegroom cannot mourn. But for other Christians, who have not advanced to so high a summit of perfection, the fast of mourning is entirely fitting and appropriate,⁴⁵ since they are earnestly concerned both to wipe away past sins and to avoid future ones. Augustine therefore understands the Savior's saying to concern perfect men and the fast of mourning.⁴⁶ It does not, then, dishonor evangelical liberty for our forebears to enact some laws governing the observance of fasts.⁴⁷ Yet, within this very liberty, the conditions of perfect and imperfect men differ in the measure of abstinence:⁴⁸ the former observe the laws of fasting with great joy of soul,⁴⁹ the latter with a bitter awareness of their sins.

8. What is next alleged—that food entering a person's mouth cannot defile the soul—is certainly true and consistent with the nature of food. How could food taken into the mouth act upon a person's soul, which is spiritual in nature? But this does not abolish the laws of fasting. Although food by its own nature does not defile a person's mind, if someone exceeds the proper measure in its use and transgresses the law, it then acquires the power and force to dishonor and defile him.⁵⁰ The reply to blessed Paul's statement is similar: abstinence from food and drink, considered in their nature,⁵¹ does nothing toward attaining the kingdom of heaven; but when considered as a means to avoid sins and to observe an established law, it is of the greatest help and benefit to us.

9. Add that although Christ's disciples, who were sent to enlarge and strengthen the Christian commonwealth, were not forbidden any kind of food and were bound by no laws of fasting—since their journeys among various nations and their constant labor evidently required this—it is nevertheless likely that they often fasted and that the observance of fasting was handed down through them to later generations.

10. Finally, the claim that every creature is good and that nothing received with thanksgiving ought to be rejected seems to require the same interpretation.⁵² If we consider the nature of foods, none should indeed be rejected on the ground that they could stain us with guilt. But if we prohibit certain kinds of food for a reasonable cause, or if our forebears have prescribed a period of abstinence, then those foods must be rejected and the laws obeyed.

11. Yet what may seem to undermine this defense of evangelical liberty in our observance of fasts is that above we defined liberty as consisting in a certain ability to act or not to act.⁵³ For if we are bound by the laws of fasting so that we cannot go without fasting without penalty, how does the ability to act or not act lie within us? This institution of fasting, then, is incompatible with liberty.

But we must observe that the account of liberty we gave above is not an equally valid definition of every kind of liberty, but only of the kind that cannot be joined to the necessity of a natural impulse—that is, complete and perfect liberty in every respect. Thus, whatever we do without being driven by necessity is rightly said to be done freely by us, because we carry it out in such a way that we can refrain from doing it without any danger to ourselves. But this kind of liberty does not apply to everything for a Christian.⁵⁴ For many things are laid down in the evangelical law that cannot be omitted without penalty: loving one's neighbor; expecting nothing from one to whom one lends; not desiring a woman; and many other things of this sort. There are also many ordinances of the Pontiffs that press us to observe certain practices,⁵⁵⁵⁶ such as attending divine worship on feast days, confessing sins each year, and receiving the holy⁵⁷ Eucharist at the appointed time. Besides the liberty just described, however, there is another kind of liberty. It does not exclude every sort of necessity, but only that which is effected by violence and coercion.⁵⁸ In this sense we are said to act freely when we do something of our own will.⁵⁹ For every movement of the will, whether natural or acquired, excludes violence and coercion. What is violent comes from an external source, with the recipient contributing nothing to the force;⁶⁰ that is, the recipient has no inclination toward it, but rather an inclination toward the opposite.⁶¹ This is the liberty that true Christians claim for themselves in their actions. For although many things are prescribed for Christians under a certain obligation to act,⁶² true Christians do not observe them against their will or unwillingly;⁶³ rather, as though they had come down from heaven, they cherish and honor them with a certain ardor of the will.⁶⁴ The grace of the Holy Spirit, which we have called our primary law, does not depart from the laws of Christians.