yet again, and
not our own deeds. Leave your own fasting, therefore, and lean to
Christ alone, good Christian people, for Christ's dear bitter
passion!" Now, so loud and shrill he cried "Christ" in their ears,
and so thick he came forth with Christ's bitter passion, and that
so bitterly spoken with the sweat dropping down his cheeks, that I
marvelled not that I saw the poor women weep. For he made my own
hair stand up upon my head.

And with such preaching were the people so taken in that some fell
to break their fast on the fasting days, not of frailty or of
malice first, but almost of devotion, lest they should take from
Christ the thanks of his bitter passion. But when they were awhile
nursled in that point first, they could afterward abide and endure
many things more, for which, if he had begun with them, they would
have pulled him down.

ANTHONY: Cousin, God amend that man, whatsoever he be, and God
keep all good folk from such manner of preachers! One such
preacher much more abuseth the name of Christ and of his bitter
passion than do five hundred gamblers who in their idle business
swear and foreswear themselves by his holy bitter passion at dice.
They carry the minds of the people from perceiving their craft by
the continual naming of the name of Christ, and crying his passion
so shrill into their ears that they forget that the Church hath
ever taught them that all our penance without Christ's passion
would not be worth a pea. And they make the people think that we
wish to be saved by our own deeds, without Christ's death; whereas
we confess that his passion alone meriteth incomparably more for
us than all our own deeds do, but that it is his pleasure that we
shall also take pain ourselves with him. And therefore he biddeth
all who will be his disciples to take their crosses on their backs
as he did, and with their crosses follow him.

And where they say that fasting serveth but for temperance to tame
the flesh and keep it from wantonness, I would in good faith have
thought that Moses had not been so wild that for the taming of his
flesh he should have need to fast whole forty days together. No,
not Hely neither. Nor yet our Saviour himself, who began the
Lenten forty-days fast--and the apostles followed, and all
Christendom hath kept it--that these folk call now so foolish.
King Achab was not disposed to be wanton in his flesh, when he
fasted and went clothed in sackcloth and all besprent with ashes.
No