The Misunderstanding of Types and the Purpose of Fasting

The offspring of Abraham are abortions, slaves of thoughtlessness instead of sons of freedom, ignorant and lawless though supposedly disciples of the law, having lost the hope of the outcome because they did not rationally receive the types of what is to come.

For Moses, in everything he did, prefigured the idols that would come later; whether you speak of the fast, or the feast of tabernacles, or the sounding of the trumpets, likewise the circumcision, the unleavened bread, the bitter herbs. All those things were messages and icons pre-drawn for those being initiated into the mysteries toward the completion.

For I, the Christian, fast well as a slave of the crucified, whether purifying myself toward the hope of the resurrection or clinging as a devoted slave to the sufferings of my Lord. But you, son of the murderers and descendant of those who slaughtered the lamb, having received the inheritance of the shed blood through the voice of the fathers, who thus made vows for themselves and their children, tell me, for what purpose do you fast? If it is as one repenting of the things in which you sinned—I support you in this opinion—and leaving the assembly of those committing adultery, hasten toward the church of the pious. Come to the blood of the lamb and be sprinkled; for from there purification for you shall exist, from which I shall stand away from sin. But if you are still bound to the same things, what do you intend by the abstention from food, or are you imitating the Nile crocodiles, whom they say roar at the heads of the men they ate and weep for the slaughter, not taking repentance for what happened, but rather the fleshless, it seems to me, mourning the head as if it were unfit for eating? Such also is the form regarding the fast.

The fasts are mere dances and plays, middle parts and episodes, things that oppose the outward appearance fasting is understood as a pedagogue of thickening and the restraint of elegance, while the dance interprets the spilled liquid with unbridled and many pleasantries.

For remember here the Mosaic word saying to fast on the tenth of the seventh month. For the seventh month denotes the seventh day, and the tenth denotes the tenth hour, in which the Lord on the cross gave up the ghost.