"Who can think, with common sense,
A smooth shaved face gives God offence?
Or that a whisker hath a charm,
Eternal justice to disarm?"
He even proposed to him to get shaved. Keimer swore outright that he would never lose his beard. A stiff altercation ensued. But Keimer getting angry, Ben agreed at last to give up the beard. He said that, "as the beard at best was but an external, a mere excrescence, he would not insist on that as so very essential. But certainly sir," continued he, "there is one thing that is."
Keimer wanted to know what that was.
"Why sir," added Ben, "this turning out and preaching up a New Religion, is, without doubt, a very serious affair, and ought not to be undertaken too hastily. Much time, sir, in my opinion at least, should be spent in making preparation, in which, fasting should certainly have a large share."
Keimer, who was a great glutton, said he could never fast.
Ben then insisted that if they were not to fast altogether, they ought, at any rate, to abstain from animal food, and live as the saints of old did, on vegetables and water.
Keimer shook his head, and said that if he were to live on vegetables and water, he should soon die.