Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chap. I.—On Eating.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chap. I.—On Eating.
Keeping,
then, to our aim, and selecting the Scriptures which bear on the
usefulness of training for life, we must now compendiously describe
what the man who is called a Christian ought to be during the whole of
his life. We must accordingly begin with ourselves, and how we ought to
regulate ourselves. We have therefore, preserving a due regard to the
symmetry of this work, to say how each of us ought to conduct himself
in respect to his body, or rather how to regulate the body itself. For
whenever any one, who has been brought away by the Word from external
things, and from attention to the body itself to the mind, acquires a
clear view of what happens according to nature in man, he will know that
he is not to be earnestly occupied about external things, but about what
is proper and peculiar to man—to purge the eye of the soul, and to
sanctify also his flesh. For he that is clean rid of those things which
constitute him still dust, what else has he more serviceable than himself
for walking in the way which leads to the comprehension of God.
Some men, in truth, live that they may eat, as the
irrational creatures, “whose life is their belly, and nothing
else.” But the Instructor enjoins us to eat that we may live. For
neither is food our business, nor is pleasure our aim; but both are on
account of our life here, which the Word is training up to immortality.
Wherefore also there is discrimination to be employed in reference to
food. And it is to be simple, truly plain, suiting precisely simple and
artless children—as ministering to life, not to luxury. And the life
to which it conduces consists of two things—health and strength;
to which plainness of fare is most suitable, being conducive both to
digestion and lightness of body, from which come growth, and health,
and right strength, not strength that is wrong or dangerous and wretched,
as is that of athletes produced by compulsory feeding.
We must therefore reject different varieties, which
engender various mischiefs, such as a depraved habit of body and disorders
of the stomach, the taste being vitiated by an unhappy art—that
of cookery, and the useless art of making pastry. For people dare to
call by the name of food their dabbling in luxuries, which glides into
mischievous pleasures. Antiphanes, the Delian physician, said that this
variety of viands was the one cause of disease; there being people who
dislike the truth, and through various absurd notions abjure moderation
of diet, and put themselves to a world of trouble to procure dainties
from beyond seas.
For my part, I am sorry for this disease, while they
are not ashamed to sing the praises of their delicacies, giving themselves
great trouble to get lampreys in the Straits of Sicily, the eels of the
Mæander, and the kids found in Melos, and the mullets in Sciathus,
and the mussels of Pelorus, the oysters of Abydos, not omitting the
sprats found in Lipara, and the Mantinican turnip; and furthermore,
the beetroot that grows among the Ascræans: they seek out the
cockles of Methymna, the turbots of Attica, and the thrushes of Daphnis,
and the reddish-brown dried figs, on account of which the ill-starred
Persian marched into Greece with five hundred thousand men. Besides
these, they purchase birds from Phasis, the Egyptian snipes, and the
Median peafowl. Altering these by means of condiments, the gluttons
gape for the sauces. “Whatever earth and the depths of the sea,
and the unmeasured space of the air produce,” they cater for their
gluttony. In their greed and solicitude, the gluttons seem absolutely
to sweep the world with a drag-net to gratify their luxurious tastes.
These gluttons, surrounded with the sound of hissing frying-pans, and
wearing their whole life away at the pestle and mortar, cling to matter
like fire. More than that, they emasculate plain food, namely bread,
by straining off the nourishing part of the grain, so that
the necessary part of food
becomes matter of reproach to luxury. There is no limit to epicurism
among men. For it has driven them to sweetmeats, and honey-cakes,
and sugar-plums; inventing a multitude of desserts, hunting after
all manner of dishes. A man like this seems to me to be all jaw,
and nothing else. “Desire not,” says the Scripture,
“rich men’s dainties;”1302
for they belong to
a false and base life. They partake of luxurious dishes, which
a little after go to the dunghill. But we who seek the heavenly
bread must rule the belly, which is beneath heaven, and much more
the things which are agreeable to it, which “God shall
destroy,”1303
says the apostle, justly execrating
gluttonous desires. For “meats are for the belly,”1304
for on them depends this truly carnal and destructive life;
whence1305
| 1305 ὄθεν,
an emendation for ὄν. | some, speaking
with unbridled tongue, dare to apply the name agape,1306
to pitiful suppers, redolent of
savour and sauces. Dishonouring the good and saving work of the Word,
the consecrated agape, with pots and pouring of sauce; and by
drink and delicacies and smoke desecrating that name, they are deceived
in their idea, having expected that the promise of God might be bought
with suppers. Gatherings for the sake of mirth, and such entertainments as
are called by ourselves, we name rightly suppers, dinners, and banquets,
after the example of the Lord. But such entertainments the Lord has not
called agapæ. He says accordingly somewhere, “When thou
art called to a wedding, recline not on the highest couch; but when thou
art called, fall into the lowest place;”1307
and elsewhere, “When
thou makest a dinner or a supper;” and again, “But when thou
makest an entertainment, call the poor,”1308
for whose sake chiefly
a supper ought to be made. And further, “A certain man made
a great supper, and called many.”1309
But I perceive whence the
specious appellation of suppers flowed: “from the gullets and
furious love for suppers”—according to the comic poet. For,
in truth, “to many, many things are on account of the supper.”
For they have not yet learned that God has provided for His creature
(man I mean) food and drink, for sustenance, not for pleasure; since
the body derives no advantage from extravagance in viands. For, quite
the contrary, those who use the most frugal fare are the strongest
and the healthiest, and the noblest; as domestics are healthier and
stronger than their masters, and husbandmen than the proprietors;
and not only more robust, but wiser, as philosophers are wiser than
rich men. For they have not buried the mind beneath food, nor deceived
it with pleasures. But love (agape) is in truth celestial food,
the banquet of reason. “It beareth all things, endureth all things,
hopeth all things. Love never faileth.”1310
“Blessed is he who
shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.”1311
But the hardest of all cases
is for charity, which faileth not, to be cast from heaven above to the
ground into the midst of sauces. And do you imagine that I am thinking of
a supper that is to be done away with? “For if,” it is said,
“I bestow all my goods, and have not love, I am nothing.”1312
On
this love alone depend the law and the Word; and if “thou shalt
love the Lord thy God and thy neighbour,” this is the celestial
festival in the heavens. But the earthly is called a supper, as has been
shown from Scripture. For the supper is made for love, but the supper is
not love (agape); only a proof of mutual and reciprocal kindly
feeling. “Let not, then, your good be evil spoken of; for the
kingdom of God is not meat and drink,” says the apostle, in order
that the meal spoken of may not be conceived as ephemeral, “but
righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”1313
He who eats of this meal, the best of all, shall possess the kingdom of
God, fixing his regards here on the holy assembly of love, the heavenly
Church. Love, then, is something pure and worthy of God, and its work
is communication. “And the care of discipline is love,”
as Wisdom says; “and love is the keeping of the law.”1314
And these joys have an inspiration of love from the public nutriment,
which accustoms to everlasting dainties. Love (agape), then, is
not a supper. But let the entertainment depend on love. For it is said,
“Let the children whom Thou hast loved, O Lord, learn that it is
not the products of fruits that nourish man; but it is Thy word which
preserves those who believe on Thee.”1315
“For the
righteous shall not live by bread.”1316
But let our
diet be light and digestible, and suitable for keeping awake, unmixed
with diverse varieties. Nor is this a point which is beyond the sphere
of discipline. For love is a good nurse for communication; having as
its rich provision sufficiency, which, presiding over diet measured
in due quantity, and treating the body in a healthful way, distributes
something from its resources to those near us. But the diet which exceeds
sufficiency injures a man, deteriorates his spirit, and renders his body
prone to disease. Besides, those dainty tastes,
which trouble themselves about
rich dishes, drive to practices of ill-repute, daintiness, gluttony,
greed, voracity, insatiability. Appropriate designations of such
people as so indulge are flies, weasels, flatterers, gladiators,
and the monstrous tribes of parasites—the one class
surrendering reason, the other friendship, and the other life,
for the gratification of the belly; crawling on their bellies,
beasts in human shape after the image of their father, the voracious
beast. People first called the abandoned ἀσώτους,
and so appear to me to indicate their end, understanding
them as those who are (ἀσώστους)
unsaved, excluding the σ. For those that are absorbed in pots, and
exquisitely prepared niceties of condiments, are they not plainly abject,
earth-born, leading an ephemeral kind of life, as if they were not to live
[hereafter]? Those the Holy Spirit, by Isaiah, denounces as wretched,
depriving them tacitly of the name of love (agape), since their
feasting was not in accordance with the word. “But they made mirth,
killing calves, and sacrificing sheep, saying, Let us eat and drink,
for to-morrow we die.” And that He reckons such luxury to be sin,
is shown by what He adds, “And your sin shall not be forgiven
you till you die,”1317
—not conveying the idea that death,
which deprives of sensation, is the forgiveness of sin, but meaning
that death of salvation which is the recompense of sin. “Take no
pleasure in abominable delicacies, says Wisdom.1318
At this point, too,
we have to advert to what are called things sacrificed to idols, in
order to show how we are enjoined to abstain from them. Polluted and
abominable those things seem to me, to the blood of which, fly
“Souls from Erebus of inanimate corpses.”1319
“For I would not that ye
should have fellowship with demons,”1320
says the apostle; since the
food of those who are saved and those who perish is separate. We must
therefore abstain from these viands not for fear (because there is no
power in them); but on account of our conscience, which is holy, and out
of detestation of the demons to which they are dedicated, are we to loathe
them; and further, on account of the instability of those who regard many
things in a way that makes them prone to fall, “whose conscience,
being weak, is defiled: for meat commendeth us not to God.”1321
“For it is not that which entereth in that defileth a man, but
that which goeth out of his mouth.”1322
The natural use of food is
then indifferent. “For neither if we eat are we the better,”
it is said, “nor if we eat not are we the worse.”1323
But it
is inconsistent with reason, for those that have been made worthy to share
divine and spiritual food, to partake of the tables of demons. “Have
we not power to eat and to drink,” says the apostle, “and
to lead about wives”? But by keeping pleasures under command we
prevent lusts. See, then, that this power of yours never “become
a stumbling-block to the weak.”
For it were not seemly that we, after the fashion
of the rich man’s son in the Gospel,1324
should, as prodigals, abuse the
Father’s gifts; but we should use them, without undue attachment
to them, as having command over ourselves. For we are enjoined to reign
and rule over meats, not to be slaves to them. It is an admirable thing,
therefore, to raise our eyes aloft to what is true, to depend on that
divine food above, and to satiate ourselves with the exhaustless
contemplation of that which truly exists, and so taste of the only
sure and pure delight. For such is the agape, which, the food
that comes from Christ shows that we ought to partake of. But totally
irrational, futile, and not human is it for those that are of the earth,
fattening themselves like cattle, to feed themselves up for death; looking
downwards on the earth, and bending ever over tables; leading a life of
gluttony; burying all the good of existence here in a life that by and by
will end; courting voracity alone, in respect to which cooks are held in
higher esteem than husbandmen. For we do not abolish social intercourse,
but look with suspicion on the snares of custom, and regard them as a
calamity. Wherefore daintiness is to be shunned, and we are to partake
of few and necessary things. “And if one of the unbelievers call
us to a feast, and we determine to go” (for it is a good thing
not to mix with the dissolute), the apostle bids us “eat what
is set before us, asking no questions for conscience sake.”1325
Similarly
he has enjoined to purchase “what is sold in the shambles,”
without curious questioning.1326
We are not, then, to abstain wholly from various
kinds of food, but only are not to be taken up about them. We are to
partake of what is set before us, as becomes a Christian, out of respect
to him who has invited us, by a harmless and moderate participation in the
social meeting; regarding the sumptuousness of what is put on the table
as a matter of indifference, despising the dainties, as after a little
destined to perish. “Let him who eateth, not despise him who eateth
not; and let him who eateth not, not judge him who eateth.”1327
And a
little way on he explains the reason of the command, when
he says, “He that eateth, eateth
to the Lord, and giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord
he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.”1328
So that the right food
is thanksgiving. And he who gives thanks does not occupy his time in
pleasures. And if we would persuade any of our fellow-guests to virtue,
we are all the more on this account to abstain from those dainty
dishes; and so exhibit ourselves as a bright pattern of virtue, such
as we ourselves have in Christ. “For if any of such meats make a
brother to stumble, I shall not eat it as long as the world lasts,”
says he, “that I may not make my brother stumble.”1329
I gain the man by a little self-restraint. “Have we not power to
eat and to drink?”1330
And “we know”—he says the
truth—“that an idol is nothing in the world; but we have only
one true God, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus. But,”
he says, “through thy knowledge thy weak brother perishes, for
whom Christ died; and they that wound the conscience of the weak brethren
sin against Christ.”1331
| 1331
1 Cor. viii. 6, 11, 12. | Thus the apostle, in his solicitude for
us, discriminates in the case of entertainments, saying, that “if
any one called a brother be found a fornicator, or an adulterer, or an
idolater, with such an one not to eat;”1332
neither in discourse or
food are we to join, looking with suspicion on the pollution thence
proceeding, as on the tables of the demons. “It is good, then,
neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine,”1333
as both he and the Pythagoreans
acknowledge. For this is rather characteristic of a beast; and the fumes
arising from them being dense, darken the soul. If one partakes of them,
he does not sin. Only let him partake temperately, not dependent on them,
nor gaping after fine fare. For a voice will whisper to him, saying,
“Destroy not the work of God for the sake of food.”1334
For it is
the mark of a silly mind to be amazed and stupefied at what is presented
at vulgar banquets, after the rich fare which is in the Word; and much
sillier to make one’s eyes the slaves of the delicacies, so that
one’s greed is, so to speak, carried round by the servants. And how
foolish for people to raise themselves on the couches, all but pitching
their faces into the dishes, stretching out from the couch as from a
nest, according to the common saying, “that they may catch the
wandering steam by breathing it in!” And how senseless, to besmear
their hands with the condiments, and to be constantly reaching to the
sauce, cramming themselves immoderately and shamelessly, not like people
tasting, but ravenously seizing! For you may see such people, liker swine
or dogs for gluttony than men, in such a hurry to feed themselves full,
that both jaws are stuffed out at once, the veins about the face raised,
and besides, the perspiration running all over, as they are tightened with
their insatiable greed, and panting with their excess; the food pushed
with unsocial eagerness into their stomach, as if they were stowing away
their victuals for provision for a journey, not for digestion. Excess,
which in all things is an evil, is very highly reprehensible in
the matter of food. Gluttony, called ὀψοφαγία,
is nothing but excess in the use of relishes
(ὄψον); and λαιμαργία
is insanity with respect to the gullet; and γαστριμαργία
is excess with respect to food—insanity in reference to
the belly, as the name implies; for μάργος is a
madman. The apostle, checking those that transgress in their conduct at
entertainments,1335
| 1335 [Clement
seems to think this abuse was connected with the agapæ
not—one might trust—with the Lord’s supper.] |
says: “For every one taketh beforehand in eating his own supper;
and one is hungry, and another drunken. Have ye not houses to eat and
to drink in? Or despise ye the church of God, and shame those who have
not?”1336
And among those who have, they, who eat shamelessly and
are insatiable, shame themselves. And both act badly; the one by paining
those who have not, the other by exposing their own greed in the presence
of those who have. Necessarily, therefore, against those who have cast
off shame and unsparingly abuse meals, the insatiable to whom nothing is
sufficient, the apostle, in continuation, again breaks forth in a voice
of displeasure: “So that, my brethren, when ye come together to eat,
wait for one another. And if any one is hungry, let him eat at home, that
ye come not together to condemnation.”1337
From all slavish habits1338
and excess we must abstain, and touch
what is set before us in a decorous way; keeping the hand and couch and
chin free of stains; preserving the grace of the countenance undisturbed,
and committing no indecorum in the act of swallowing; but stretching
out the hand at intervals in an orderly manner. We must guard against
speaking anything while eating: for the voice becomes disagreeable and
inarticulate when it is confined by full jaws; and the tongue, pressed
by the food and impeded in its natural energy, gives forth a compressed
utterance. Nor is it suitable to eat and to drink simultaneously. For
it is the very extreme of intemperance to confound the times whose
uses are discordant. And “whether ye eat or drink, do all to
the glory of God,”1339
aiming after true frugality, which the Lord
also seems to me to have hinted at when He blessed
the loaves and the cooked fishes with
which He feasted the disciples, introducing a beautiful example of simple
food. That fish then which, at the command of the Lord, Peter caught,
points to digestible and God-given and moderate food. And by those
who rise from the water to the bait of righteousness, He admonishes us
to take away luxury and avarice, as the coin from the fish; in order
that He might displace vainglory; and by giving the stater to the
tax-gatherers, and “rendering to Cæsar the things which are
Cæsar’s,” might preserve “to God the things which
are God’s.”1340
The stater is capable of other explanations
not unknown to us, but the present is not a suitable occasion for their
treatment. Let the mention we make for our present purpose suffice, as it
is not unsuitable to the flowers of the Word; and we have often done this,
drawing to the urgent point of the question the most beneficial fountain,
in order to water those who have been planted by the Word. “For
if it is lawful for me to partake of all things, yet all things are
not expedient.”1341
For those that do all that is lawful, quickly
fall into doing what is unlawful. And just as righteousness is not
attained by avarice, nor temperance by excess; so neither is the regimen
of a Christian formed by indulgence; for the table of truth is far from
lascivious dainties. For though it was chiefly for men’s sake that
all things were made, yet it is not good to use all things, nor at all
times. For the occasion, and the time, and the mode, and the intention,
materially turn the balance with reference to what is useful, in the view
of one who is rightly instructed; and this is suitable, and has influence
in putting a stop to a life of gluttony, which wealth is prone to choose,
not that wealth which sees clearly, but that abundance which makes a man
blind with reference to gluttony. No one is poor as regards necessaries,
and a man is never overlooked. For there is one God who feeds the fowls
and the fishes, and, in a word, the irrational creatures; and not one
thing whatever is wanting to them, though “they take no thought
for their food.”1342
And we are better than they, being their lords, and
more closely allied to God, as being wiser; and we were made, not that we
might eat and drink, but that we might devote ourselves to the knowledge
of God. “For the just man who eats is satisfied in his soul, but
the belly of the wicked shall want,”1343
filled with the appetites
of insatiable gluttony. Now lavish expense is adapted not for enjoyment
alone, but also for social communication. Wherefore we must guard against
those articles of food which persuade us to eat when we are not hungry,
bewitching the appetite. For is there not within a temperate simplicity
a wholesome variety of eatables? Bulbs,1344
| 1344 A bulbous root, much prized in Greece, which grew
wild. | olives, certain herbs, milk, cheese, fruits, all kinds
of cooked food without sauces; and if flesh is wanted, let roast rather
than boiled be set down. Have you anything to eat here? said the Lord1345
to the disciples after the resurrection; and they, as taught by Him to
practice frugality, “gave Him a piece of broiled fish;” and
having eaten before them, says Luke, He spoke to them what He spoke. And
in addition to these, it is not to be overlooked that those who feed
according to the Word are not debarred from dainties in the shape
of honey-combs. For of articles of food, those are the most suitable
which are fit for immediate use without fire, since they are readiest;
and second to these are those which are simplest, as we said before. But
those who bend around inflammatory tables, nourishing their own diseases,
are ruled by a most lickerish demon, whom I shall not blush to call the
Belly-demon, and the worst and most abandoned of demons. He is therefore
exactly like the one who is called the Ventriloquist-demon. It
is far better to be happy1346
| 1346 A play here on the words εὐδαίμων
and δαίμων. |
than to have a demon dwelling with us. And happiness
is found in the practice of virtue. Accordingly,
the apostle Matthew partook of seeds, and nuts,1347
| 1347 ἀκρόδρυα,
hard-shelled fruits. | and vegetables, without flesh. And John,
who carried temperance to the extreme, “ate locusts and wild
honey.” Peter abstained from swine; “but a trance fell on
him,” as is written in the Acts of the Apostles, “and he saw
heaven opened, and a vessel let down on the earth by the four corners,
and all the four-looted beasts and creeping things of the earth and the
fowls of heaven in it; and there came a voice to him, Rise, and slay, and
eat. And Peter said, Not so, Lord, for I have never eaten what is common
or unclean. And the voice came again to him the second time, What God
hath cleansed, call not thou common.”1348
The use of them is
accordingly indifferent to us. “For not what entereth into the mouth
defileth the man,”1349
but the vain opinion respecting uncleanness. For
God, when He created man, said, “All things shall be to you for
meat.”1350
“And herbs, with love, are better than a calf
with fraud.”1351
This well reminds us of what was said above,
that herbs are not love, but that our meals are to be taken with
love;1352
and in these the medium
state is
good. In all things, indeed, this is
the case, and not least in the preparation made for feasting, since the
extremes are dangerous, and middle courses good. And to be in no want
of necessaries is the medium. For the desires which are in accordance
with nature are bounded by sufficiency. The Jews had frugality enjoined
on them by the law in the most systematic manner. For the Instructor,
by Moses, deprived them of the use of innumerable things, adding
reasons—the spiritual ones hidden; the carnal ones apparent, to
which indeed they have trusted; in the case of some animals, because
they did not part the hoof, and others because they did not ruminate
their food, and others because alone of aquatic animals they were devoid
of scales; so that altogether but a few were left appropriate for their
food. And of those that he permitted them to touch, he prohibited such
as had died, or were offered to idols, or had been strangled; for to
touch these was unlawful. For since it is impossible for those who use
dainties to abstain from partaking of them, he appointed the opposite
mode of life, till he should break down the propensity to indulgence
arising from habit. Pleasure has often produced in men harm and pain;
and full feeding begets in the soul uneasiness, and forgetfulness, and
foolishness. And they say that the bodies of children, when shooting up
to their height, are made to grow right by deficiency in nourishment.
For then the spirit, which pervades the body in order to its growth, is
not checked by abundance of food obstructing the freedom of its course.
Whence that truth-seeking philosopher Plato, fanning the spark of the
Hebrew philosophy when condemning a life of luxury, says: “On my
coming hither, the life which is here called happy, full of Italian
and Syracusan tables, pleased me not by any means, [consisting as it
did] in being filled twice a day, and never sleeping by night alone,
and whatever other accessories attend the mode of life. For not one
man under heaven, if brought up from his youth in such practices, will
ever turn out a wise man, with however admirable a natural genius he
may be endowed.” For Plato was not unacquainted with David, who
“placed the sacred ark in his city in the midst of the
tabernacle;” and bidding all his subjects rejoice “before the
Lord, divided to the whole host of Israel, man and woman, to each a loaf
of bread, and baked bread, and a cake from the frying-pan.”1353
This was the sufficient sustenance of the
Israelites. But that of the Gentiles was over-abundant. No one
who uses it will ever study to become temperate, burying as he
does his mind in his belly, very like the fish called ass,1354
| 1354 ὄνος, perhaps the hake
or cod. | which, Aristotle says, alone of all creatures has
its heart in its stomach. This fish Epicharmus the comic poet calls
“monster-paunch.”
Such are the men who believe in their belly,
“whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind
earthly things.” To them the apostle predicted no good when he
said, “whose end is destruction.”1355
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
