The Benefits of Fasting.
He that undertakes to enumerate the benefits of fasting may, in the next page, also reckon all the benefits of physic, for fasting is not to be commended as a duty, but as an instrument; and in that sense no man can reprove it, or undervalue it, but he that knows neither spiritual arts nor spiritual necessities. But by the doctors of the church it is called the nourishment of prayer, the restraint of lust, the wings of the souls, the diet of angels, the instrument of humility and self-denial, the purification of the spirit; and the paleness and meagerness of visage, which is consequent to the daily fast of great mortifiers, is, by St. Basil, said to be the mark in the forehead which the angel observed when he signed the saints in the forehead to escape the wrath of God. “The soul that is greatly vexed, which goeth stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul, shall give thee praise and righteousness, O Lord!”223223Baruch, ii. v. 18.