“How it may be in other countries and religions I will not say, but among us good Protestants, abstinence, temperance, and moderation (at least in eating), are so far from being thought a virtue, and their contrary a vice, that it would seem that not eating the fattest and most delicious, and _to the top_, were the only vice and disease known among us--against which our parents, relatives, friends, and physicians exclaim with great vehemence and zeal. And yet, if we consider the matter attentively we shall find there is no such danger in abstinence as we imagine, but, on the contrary, the greatest abstinence and moderation nature and its external laws will suffer us to go into and practise for any time, will neither endanger our health, nor weaken our just thinking, be it ever so unlimited or unrestrained.... And it is a wise providence that Lent time falls out at that season which, if kept according to its original intention, in seeds and vegetables well dressed and not in rich high-dressed fish, would go a great way to preserve the health of the people in general, as well as dispose them to seriousness and reflection--so true it is that ‘godliness has the promise of this life, and of that which is to come,’ and it is very observable that in all civil and established religious worships hitherto known among polished nations Lents, days of abstinence, seasons of fasting and bringing down the brutal part of the rational being, have had a large share, and been reckoned an indispensable part of their worship and duty, except among a wrong-headed part of our Reformation, where it has been despised and ridiculed into a total neglect. And yet it seems not only natural and convenient for health, but strongly commended both in the Old and New Testament, and might allow time and proper disposition for more serious and weighty purposes. And this ‘Lent,’ or times of abstinence, is one reason of the cheerfulness or serenity of some Roman Catholic or Southern countries, which would be still more healthy and long-lived were it not for their excessive use of aromatics and opiates, which are the worst kind of dry drams, and the cause of their unnatural and unbridled lechery and shortness of life.” Denouncing the general practice of the Profession of encouraging their patients in indulging vitiated habits and tastes, he reminds them:--