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Animal Rights History Timeline » [BCE-CE] Antiquity » Tertullian

Tertullian

On Fasting, In Opposition of the Psychics

VI. Physical Tendencies of Fasting and Feeding Considered

[3rd c.] Tertullian, "The Physical Tendencies of Fasting and Feeding Considered," in chap. 6 of On Fasting. In Opposition of the Psychics, [De Jeiuniis: Adversus Psychios,] by Rev. S. Thelwall in Fathers of the Third Century Vol. 4 in Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325 edited by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson in 10 vols., (1885-96 American reprint of the 1866-72 Edinburgh edition Online at Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2004)

Now, if there has been temerity in our retracing to primordial experiences the reasons for God's having laid, and our duty (for the sake of God) to lay, restrictions upon food, let us consult common conscience. Nature herself will plainly tell with what qualities she is ever wont to find us endowed when she sets us, before taking food and drink, with our saliva still in a virgin state, to the transaction of matters, by the sense especially whereby things divine are, handled; whether (it be not) with a mind much more vigorous, with a heart much more alive, than when that whole habitation of our interior man, stuffed with meats, inundated with wines, fermenting for the purpose of excremental secretion, is already being turned into a premeditatory of privies, (a premeditatory) where, plainly, nothing is so proximately supersequent as the savouring of lasciviousness.