e work itself: when they have
performed that, they think they have done a good work. I will
here say nothing of the fact that some fast in such a way that
they none the less drink themselves full; some fast by eating
fish and other foods so lavishly that they would come much nearer
to fasting if they ate meat, eggs and butter, and by so doing
would obtain far better results from their fasting. For such
fasting is not fasting, but a mockery of fasting and of God.

Therefore I allow everyone to choose his day, food and quantity
for fasting, as he will, on condition that he do not stop with
that, but have regard to his flesh; let him put upon it fasting,
watching and labor according to its lust and wantonness, and no
more, although pope, Church, bishop, father-confessor or any one
else whosoever have commanded it. For no one should measure and
regulate fasting, watching and labor according to the character
or quantity of the food, or according to the days, but according
to the withdrawal or approach of the lust and wantonness of the
flesh, for the sake of which alone the fasting, watching and
labor is ordained, that is, to kill and to subdue them. If it
were not for this lust, eating were as meritorious as fasting,
sleeping as watching, idleness as labor, and each were as good as
the other without all distinction.

[Sidenote: The Limitation of Fasting]

XX. Now, if some one should find that more wantonness arose in
his flesh from eating fish than from eating eggs and meat, let
him eat meat and not fish. Again, if he find that his head
becomes confused and crazed or his body and stomach injured
through fasting, or that it is not needful to kill the wantonness
of his flesh, he shall let fasting alone entirely, and eat,
sleep, be idle as is necessary for his health, regardless whether
it be against the command of the Church, or the rules of monastic
orders: for no commandment of the Church, no law of an order can
make fasting, watching and labor of more value than it has in
serving to repress or to kill the flesh and its lusts. Where men
go beyond this, and the fasting, eating, sleeping, watching are
practised beyond the strength of the body, and more than is
necessary to the killing of the lust, so that through it the
natural strength is ruined and the head is racked; then let no
one imagine that he has done good works, or excuse himself by
citing the commandment of the Church or the law of his order. He
will be regard