Chapter XV.—Of the Apostle’s Language Concerning Food.

The apostle reprobates likewise such as “bid to abstain from meats; but he does so from the foresight of the Holy Spirit, precondemning already the heretics who would enjoin perpetual abstinence to the extent of destroying and despising the works of the Creator; such as I may find in the person of a Marcion, a Tatian, or a Jupiter, the Pythagorean heretic of to-day; not in the person of the Paraclete.  For how limited is the extent of our “interdiction of meats!”  Two weeks of xerophagies in the year (and not the whole of these,—the Sabbaths, to wit, and the Lord’s days, being excepted) we offer to God; abstaining from things which we do not reject, but defer.  But further:  when writing to the Romans, the apostle now gives you a home-thrust, detractors as you are of this observance:  “Do not for the sake of food,” he says, “undo100    Rom. xiv. 20. the work of God.”  What “work?”  That about which he says,101    Ver. 21. “It is good not to eat flesh, and not to drink wine:”  “for he who in these points doeth service, is pleasing and propitiable to our God.”  “One believeth that all things may be eaten; but another, being weak, feedeth on vegetables.  Let not him who eateth lightly esteem him who eateth not.  Who art thou, who judgest another’s servant?”  “Both he who eateth, and he who eateth not, giveth God thanks.”  But, since he forbids human choice to be made matter of controversy, how much more Divine!  Thus he knew how to chide certain restricters and interdicters of food, such as abstained from it of contempt, not of duty; but to approve such as did so to the honour, not the insult, of the Creator.  And if he has “delivered you the keys of the meat-market,” permitting the eating of “all things” with a view to establishing the exception of “things offered to idols;” still he has not included the kingdom of God in the meat-market:  “For,” he says, “the kingdom of God is neither meat nor drink;”102    Rom. xiv. 17. and, “Food commendeth us not to God”—not that you may think this said about dry diet, but rather about rich and carefully prepared, if, when he subjoins, “Neither, if we shall have eaten, shall we abound; nor, if we shall not have eaten, shall we be deficient,” the ring of his words suits, (as it does), you rather (than us), who think that you do “abound” if you eat, and are “deficient if you eat not; and for this reason disparage these observances.

How unworthy, also, is the way in which you interpret to the favour of your own lust the fact that the Lord “ate and drank” promiscuously!  But I think that He must have likewise “fasted” inasmuch as He has pronounced, not “the full,” but “the hungry and thirsty, blessed:”103    Comp. Luke vi. 21 and 25, and Matt. v. 6.  (He) who was wont to profess “food” to be, not that which His disciples had supposed, but “the thorough doing of the Father’s work;”104    John iv. 31–34. teaching “to labour for the meat which is permanent unto life eternal;”105    John vi. 27. in our ordinary prayer likewise commanding us to request “bread,”106    Matt. vi. 11; Luke xi. 3. not the wealth of Attalus107    See Hor., Od., i. 1, 12, and Macleane’s note there. therewithal.  Thus, too, Isaiah has not denied that God “hath chosen” a “fast;” but has particularized in detail the kind of fast which He has not chosen:  “for in the days,” he says, “of your fasts your own wills are found (indulged), and all who are subject to you ye stealthily sting; or else ye fast with a view to abuse and strifes, and ye smite with the fists.  Not such a fast have I elected;”108    See Isa. lviii. 3, 4, 5, briefly, and more like the LXX. than the Vulg. or the Eng. ver. but such an one as He has subjoined, and by subjoining has not abolished, but confirmed.

CAPUT XV.

Reprobat etiam illos qui jubebant cibis abstinere, sed de providentia Spiritus Sancti , praedamnans jam haereticos perpetuam abstinentiam praecepturos ad destruenda et despicienda opera Creatoris: quales inveniam apud Marcionem, apud Tatianum, apud Jovem, hodiernum de Pythagora haereticum, non apud Paracletum. Quantula est enim apud nos interdictio ciborum? duas in anno hebdomadas xerophagiarum, nec totas, exceptis scilicet sabbatis et dominicis offerimus Deo; abstinentes ab eis, quae non rejicimus, sed differimus. Atquin ad 0974B Romanos scribens, vos nunc compungit detrectatores hujus officii: Ne propter pabulum solveritis, 0975A inquit, opus Dei. Quod opus? de quo ait: Bonum est carnem non edere, et vinum non potare. Nam qui in istis servit, placabilis et propitiabilis Deo nostro est. Quidam credit omnia munducauda esse, quidam autem infirmus olera vescitur; qui manducat, ne nullificet non manducantem. Tu quis es, qui alienum servum judicas? Et qui manducat, et qui non manducat, Deo agit gratias. (Rom. XIV, 2, et seqq.) Cum autem humano arbitrio vetet controversiam fieri, quanto magis divino! Ita sciebat quosdam castigatores et interdictores victus incusare, qui ex fastidio, non qui ex officio abstinerent; probare vero qui in honorem, non qui in convitium Creatoris. Et si claves macelli tibi tradidit, permittens esui omnia ad constituendam idolothytorum exceptionem, non tamen in 0975B macello regnum Dei inclusit. Nec enim, inquit, esus aut potus est Dei regnum, et, Esca nos Deo non commendat; non ut de arida dictum putes, sed potius de uncta et accurata. Siquidem subjiciens, nec si manducaverimus, abundabimus ; nec si non manducaverimus, deficiemus; tibi magis insonat, qui abundare te existimas, si edas, et deficere si non edas, et ideo ista detractas. Dominum quoque quam indigne ad tuam libidinem interpretaris passim manducantem et bibentem, sed puto quod etiam jejunarit , qui beatos, non saturatos, sed esurientes et sitientes, pronuntiarit; qui escam profitebatur, non quam discipuli existimarant, sed paterni operis perfectionem, docens operari escam, quae permanet in vitam aeternam; in ordinaria etiam oratione panem mandans postulandum, 0975C non et attalicas divitias . Sic et Esaias, non negavit Deum elegisse jejunium, sed quale non elegerit, enumeravit. In diebus enim, inquit (Is., LVIII, 3), jejuniorum vestrorum inveniuntur voluptates vestrae, et omnes subjectos vobis succutitis, aut convitia et lites jejunatis, et caeditis pugnis: non tale jejunium ego elegi; sed quale subjecit, et subjiciendo non abstulit, sed confirmavit. Nam etsi mavult opera justitiae, non tamen sine sacrificio; quod est anima conflictata jejuniis.