Chocolate, then, is a preparation from the seeds of a small American tree, called by botanists Cacao Guatimalensis, bearing a large red fruit in the shape of a cucumber, which generally contains twenty or thirty of the nuts, boiled and prepared according to art.
This highly nutritious, agreeable, and, to many, wholesome drink, became on its first introduction, a subject of strong agitation, and warm contest, with many conscientious and scrupulous catholics.
Approaching in its original form, and in its alimentary properties, so nearly to solid diet, it was doubted by the timid and the devout, whether enjoying so delicious and invigorating a luxury in Lent, and other seasons appointed by the church for fasts, was not violating or eluding a sacred and indispensable ordinance.
That party which was unwilling to resign their chocolate, quoted the words of St. Thomas, who repeatedly asserts, that it is by solid food only that a fast can be properly said to be broken; that if it is unlawful to drink this liquor on fast days, because of the portion of solid cocoa contained in it; by the same rule, wine and beer, which on these occasions have never been interdicted, might be forbidden, as the first contains a large proportion of the saccharine substance of the grape, and the latter suspends rather than dissolves the whole of the farina of the grain.
The chocolate drinkers were opposed by a powerful party of rigid disciplinarians, and austere devotees; a Spanish physician wrote a Latin treatise, expressly against what appeared to him so impious a practice on a fast day; his book, entitled "Tribunal Medico-Magicum," exhibits much zeal and some learning; that he was strongly attached to the luxury against which he declaims, is a strong presumption in favour of his sincerity.
The Spaniard's book was answered, by a cardinal of the catholic church in a candid and agreeable way; it was the opinion of the ecclesiastic, supported, indeed by reason and experience, that neither chocolate nor wine taken in moderation could, strictly speaking, be construed into breaking a fast; yet, he hoped, that such a concession, would not be made a pretext by sensuality and wickedness, for using them to excess, by which some of our greatest blessings are converted into curses; as whatever tempts or occasions us to overstep the bounds of nature and of temperance, can never be defended by the canons of the church.
The Roman prelate concludes his rational and truly pious book, written in Latin, not unworthy of the Augustan age, with the following words, which ought to be written in letters of gold, in some conspicuous part of every eating-room in Europe:
"The infidel and voluptuary may ridicule the idea of the Almighty Creator of the universe, being pleased, or displeased, with a man for having a full or an empty stomach; but whatever tends directly or remotely, to subdue rebellious passions, and subject a creature like man to the restraints of reason and religion, cannot fail being a matter of the highest importance to our well-doing, and our everlasting destiny hereafter."