'Whether a man may eat a bit of bread with his drink, and yet be a good son of the church': Jeremy Taylor's critique of the law of Lenten fasting
In Ductor Dubitantium (1660), Taylor provides a characteristically Protestant critique of the law of Lenten abstinence. As discussed in an earlier post, this is certainly not because Taylor disregarded the discipline of fasting - and nor, of course, did the magisterial Reformers. There was, however, no divine or apostolic command to fast during Lent. As Taylor therefore declared in rejecting the Lenten obligation, "the Conscience is at liberty".
In this extract, Taylor emphasises how a law of Lenten abstinence promotes the erroneous belief "that the keeping of Lent is so sacred, so principal a point of religion, so great a service of God in the very letter and body", contrary to the Dominical teaching regarding "the commandments of men":
And of the same consideration was that law of Justinian, in whose time, which was in the middle of the sixth age, the custom of abstaining from flesh in Lent did prevail much; but because it happened in Constantinople to be great scarcity of other provisions, the emperor commanded the shambles to be open and flesh to be publicly sold. But Nicephorus tells that the people would not buy any, for they began to think it to be religion 'not to touch, not to taste, not to handle'. But the emperor and the wise men knew no religion against it. And that which Marcian said to Avitus in the like case is very considerable, 'We know that charity is better than fasting; for charity is a work of the divine law, but fasting is a thing arbitrary and of our own choice.' Since therefore to eat flesh or not to eat it may become good or bad as it is used, and does not serve the end of fasting, and such fasting does not serve the end of the Spirit, not only to make fasting to be religion, to which it does but minister, but to call that fasting which they who first began Lent would call feasting and luxury, and to make that to be essential to that fast, and that fast necessary to salvation in the ordinary way of necessity, is not only to teach for doctrine the commandments of men, but to make the impotent, fantastic, and unreasonable devices of men to become commandments.
That this may be an exact parallel with the practice of the pharisees in that folly which our blessed Saviour reproved, the commandment does so little regard the true end of fasting, and that fasting so little advance the use and interest of any virtue, that they spend themselves even in the circumstances of some circumstances, and little devices of superstition ... which things because they can serve no end of religion, the law that requires such things must needs be foolish or superstitious; it must either play with men's consciences as with a tennis-ball, or intimate some pollution and unholiness at that time to be in the flesh, or else at least must pretend to greater strictness than God does in the observation of His positive laws; and it certainly introduces the greatest tyranny in the world, destroys peace, and is the most unwarrantable of all the follies which can be incident to the wiser part of mankind, I mean to them that govern others.
I will not instance in the ridiculous and superstitious questions which they make about the keeping of this ecclesiastical law; as whether it be a dinner or a supper if we eat after evensong said at high noon; whether a morning's draught does break the ecclesiastical fast; whether a man may eat a bit of bread with his drink, and yet be a good son of the church; whether a cook that dresses meat for sick persons may lawfully lick his fingers; whether he that eats one bit of flesh sins anew if he eats another; and whether or no he may not at the same rate eat flesh all the Lent after; whether the wet nurse may eat flesh, because her baby may have good milk; whether it be lawful to eat birds and fowls, because they were produced out of the water ... Which questions, if they that make them be in their wits, and think other men are so too, they must needs believe that the keeping of Lent is so sacred, so principal a point of religion, so great a service of God in the very letter and body, in the crust and outside of it, that the observation of it must consist in a mathematical point: it is like the decalogue the very letters of which are numbered; and if a hair be missing, religion suffers diminution: and which of all these it be, yet in every one of them they do what the pharisees did, and what Christ reproved in them, and therefore forbids in all men, they 'teach for doctrines the commandments of men.'
Two phrases are worth noting for how they particularly demonstrate Taylor's concerns. Firstly, Taylor notes how, by giving rise to inevitable scruples, the law of Lenten fasting "destroys peace". In the Preface to Ductor Dubitantium, he had stated, "In things and questions relating to men I give those answers that take away scruples, and bring peace and a quiet mind". As one skilled and experienced in "the care of souls", Taylor knew that scruples do not lead the heart to love of God:
when Men have no love to God, and desire but just to save their Souls, and weigh grains and scruples, and give to God no more then they must needs, they shall multiply Cases of Consciences to a number which no books will contain, and to a difficulty that no learning can answer.
Secondly, in a quietly beautiful phrase, Taylor laments - with perhaps a touch of anger - how the law of Lenten abstinence can lead one to ask "Whether a man may eat a bit of bread with his drink, and yet be a good son of the church". This too reflects a concern he had highlighted in the Preface:
what God had made plain, Men have intricated; and the easy Commandment is wrapped up in uneasy learning; and by the new methods, a Simple and Uncrafty Man cannot be wise unto salvation.
A "good son of the church" is not defined by whether or not they eat bread with their drink but, rather, by "the right and plain measures of Simplicity, Christian Charity, Chastity, Temperance and Justice". The law of Lenten abstinence obscured this sanctified simplicity of Apostolic teaching:
The multiplication also of Laws and Ceremonies of Religion does exceedingly multiply questions of practice ... For we find the Apostles only exhorting to humility, to piety towards parents, to obedience to Magistrates, to charity and justice; and the Christians who meant well understood well, and needed no books of Conscience but the Rule, and the Commandment. But when Error crept in, Truth became difficult and hard to be understood.
Taylor, therefore, provides a thoroughly Protestant critique of the law of Lenten abstinence. The "good son of the church" will, of course, fast: on this, Taylor and the magisterial Reformers are abundantly clear. But such fasting is neither meaningfully nor wisely reflected in an ecclesiastical law requiring abstention from meat for the forty days of Lent: indeed, as Taylor insists, this "does not serve the end of fasting". Fasting, when freely entered into, can be "an excellent ministry". It is an ancient and godly custom that fasting is associated with preparation for Good Friday and Easter Day. Such fasting, however, is to follow the custom of the primitive church, not the law of Lenten fasting:
it is certain that the church cannot command a long fast: and therefore in the beginning of the custom of Lent it was but a fast of one day, or two at most, eating at night. And although this fast was then a fast of liberty, and permitted to every one's choice, yet it might be enjoined in every government, according to the fore-described measures. But that instead of a fast the church should prescribe a diet ... unwholesome, and that with so much severity, and with so much danger, and so many snares, is no exercise of that power which Christ hath given her, but of that power which is usurped, ill-gotten, and worse administered. It is against the law of charity, and therefore ought not to be a law of the church; that men be tied for forty days together to keep from their usual diet, not to be temperate, but to be vexed and ruled, this I say is uncharitable, and therefore unlawful.
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