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Longer Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

Rule 18: That It is Necessary to Eat All that is Set Before Us

We must of necessity lay down this principle also, that continence is indispensable for those that contend for piety if they are to achieve the requisite “buffeting” of the body. For “every man that striveth in the games is temperate in all things.”¹ But to avoid falling into the same error as the enemies of God, who are branded in their conscience as with a hot iron, and therefore abstain from meats, which God created to be received by the faithful with thanksgiving,² we should taste every kind of food when opportunity is given, to show to the onlookers that to the pure all things are pure³ and that every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it be received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified through the word of God and prayer.⁴ But in so doing we must continually keep continence in mind, using the cheaper foods and bare necessaries to the extent of our need, though even in them shunning the harmfulness of satiety, and refraining entirely from what ministers to pleasure. For thus we shall extirpate the vice of voluptuaries and cure, so far as lies in us, those who are branded in their conscience with a hot iron, and free ourselves from the suspicion of falling into either extreme.⁵ “For why is my liberty judged by another conscience?”⁶

Continence betokens a man who has died with Christ and mortified his members that are upon the earth.⁷ We know it to be the mother of temperance,⁸ the winner of health, the potent remover of hindrances to the bearing of good fruit in Christ. Since, as the Lord says, the cares of this world, and the pleasures of life, and the lusts of other things choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.⁹ Even the demons flee continence, for the Lord Himself taught us that “this kind goeth not out save by prayer and fasting.”¹⁰

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