A guide to godliness or a Treatise of a Christian life showing the dutiesA guide to godlynesse or a Treatise of a Christian life shewing the duties

The next point to be considered, is the parts of this Fast, or the things wherein it chiefly consisteth. For either this Fast is outward and bodily, or inward and Spiritual. The former being a help to the latter, and the latter, the end of the former. The bodily Fast, is our abstinence for the time that it continueth from the most of the commodities and comforts of this life, so far forth as will stand with charity and comeliness, and a cessation from all our ordinary affairs & labours, because it is to be kept as a Sabbath ¹of humiliation unto the Lord. The commodities of this life are many, the chief whereof are meats and drinks, from which we must totally abstain in all kinds whilst the Fast continueth, so far forth as will ²stand with the health of our bodies, and the advancing of those ends which we principally intend in this exercise. If our health will bear it, we must not content our selves with the sober use of the creatures as at other times, but wholly abstain from them, according to the example ³of the faithful in all ages; seeing in this exercise one main thing, at which we aim, is to humble our selves before God, acknowledging, that we are utterly unworthy of the least of his benefits for the preserving of our lives. But if in respect of our weakness, such total abstinence will hazard our health, we may eat or drink so much as the necessity of our state requireth, seeing the Lord desireth