A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…

Which may arise sometimes from necessity and want of food, as when the people followed Christ in the wilderness, and continued three days there, and had nothing to eat; and hereupon Christ wrought a miracle to feed them, because he would not send them away fasting, and they faint in the way, Mat. 15.32. So when Paul was in his Voyage to Rome, for want of provision he and his company fasted fourteen days, Act. 27.33.

Which may arise sometimes from necessity and want of food, as vvhen the people followed Christ in the wilderness, and continued three days there, and had nothing to eat; and hereupon Christ wrought a miracle to feed them, because he would not send them away fasting, and they faint in the way, Mat. 15.32. So when Paul was in his Voyage to Rome, for want of provision he and his company fasted fourteen days, Act. 27.33.

Or else this natural fast is through want of appetite, though food is present. There may be an Atrophy upon Nature, and man fasts only because he cannot eat. Now this fasting is of no avail with God; if a man eats not, he is nothing the better, and if he eats, he is no whit the worse. Bodily exercise profiteth nothing of it self. As the Kingdom of God is not meats and drinks, so neither is it abstinence from meats and drinks, especially such abstinence as this that is not voluntary, but upon necessity.

2. Civil, when there is a fasting upon a civil account, with respect to some civil end. As when the Magistrate doth impose abstinence from meats for a while for some civil good.