Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Herrick’s Church of Earthly Delights 196
IS this a Fast, to keep
The Larder leane?
And cleane
From fat of Veales, and Sheep? (1-4)
And the answer for Herrick is a definite no. He even mocks the custom of meatless Lent
when he also asks
Is it to quit the dish
Of Flesh, yet still
To fill
The platter high with Fish? (5-8)
There is a similar criticism of how to keep a true lent which George Herbert has written.
In his work The Country Parson he writes that there are times when eating flesh is
preferable to meat, and in fact shows greater dedication to the true concept of fasting.
Now fasting dayes containe a treble obligation; first, of eating lesse that day, then
on other dayes; secondly, of eating no pleasing or over-nourishing things, as the
Israelites did eate sowre herbs: Thirdly, of eating no flesh, which is but the
determination of the second rule by Authority to this particular. The two former
obligations are much more essentiall to a true fast, then the third and last; and
fasting dayes were fully performed by keeping of the two former, had not
Authority interposed: so that to eat little, and that unpleasant, is the naturall rule of
fasting, although it be flesh. For since fasting in Scripture language is an afflicting