How does Dimmesdale try to purify his body in Scarlet Letter?

Dimmesdale does not physically try to purify his body throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s _The Scarlet Letter_. Instead, Dimmesdale engages in acts of self-mortification such as fasting and scourging himself as forms of emotional and psychological self-punishment for committing adultery with Hester Prynne and conceiving the titular letter. As the novel suggests, the minister does desire redemption for his deeds rather than to make his physical being unblemished.