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| Arguments of the Psychics, Drawn from the Law, the Gospel, the Acts, the Epistles, and Heathenish Practices.
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Chapter
II.—Arguments of the Psychics, Drawn from the Law, the Gospel,
the Acts, the Epistles, and Heathenish Practices.
For, so far as pertains to fasts, they oppose to us the
definite days appointed by God: as when, in Leviticus, the Lord
enjoins upon Moses the tenth day of the seventh month (as) a day of
atonement, saying,
“Holy shall be to you the day, and ye shall vex your souls; and
every soul which shall not have been vexed in that day shall be
exterminated from his people.”1004
At all
events, in the Gospel they think that those days were definitely
appointed for fasts in which “the Bridegroom was taken
away;”1005
| 1005 Matt. ix. 14, 15; Mark ii. 18–20;
Luke v. 33–35. | and that these are
now the only legitimate days for Christian fasts, the legal and
prophetical antiquities having been abolished: for wherever it
suits their wishes, they recognise what is the meaning of “the
Law and the prophets until John.”1006
Accordingly, (they think) that, with
regard to the future, fasting was to be indifferently observed, by the
New Discipline, of choice, not of command, according to the times and
needs of each individual: that this, withal, had been the
observance of the apostles, imposing (as they did) no other yoke of
definite fasts to be observed by all generally, nor similarly of
Stations either, which (they think) have withal days of their own (the
fourth and sixth days of the week), but yet take a wide range according
to individual judgment, neither subject to the law of a given precept,
nor (to be protracted) beyond the last hour of the day, since even
prayers the ninth hour generally concludes, after Peter’s
example, which is recorded in the Acts. Xerophagies, however,
(they consider) the novel name of a studied duty, and very much akin to
heathenish superstition, like the abstemious rigours which purify an
Apis, an Isis, and a Magna Mater, by a restriction laid upon certain
kinds of food; whereas faith, free in Christ,1007
owes no abstinence from particular meats to the Jewish Law even,
admitted as it has been by the apostle once for all to the whole range
of the meat-market1008
—(the apostle,
I say), that detester of such as, in like manner as they prohibit
marrying, so bid us abstain from meats created by God.1009
And accordingly (they think) us
to have been even then prenoted as “in the latest times departing
from the faith, giving heed to spirits which seduce the world, having a
conscience inburnt with doctrines of liars.”1010
(Inburnt?) With what fires,
prithee? The fires, I ween, which lead us to repeated contracting
of nuptials and daily cooking of dinners! Thus, too, they affirm
that we share with the Galatians the piercing rebuke (of the apostle),
as “observers of days, and of months, and of
years.”1011
| 1011 See Gal. iv. 10; the words καὶ
καιρούς Tertullian
omits. | Meantime they
huff in our teeth the fact that Isaiah withal has authoritatively
declared, “Not such a fast hath the Lord elected,” that is,
not abstinence from food, but the works of righteousness, which he
there appends:1012
and that the
Lord Himself in the Gospel has given a compendious answer to every kind
of scrupulousness in regard to food; “that not by such things as
are introduced into the mouth is a man defiled, but by such as are
produced out of the mouth;”1013
while Himself
withal was wont to eat and drink till He made Himself noted thus;
“Behold, a gormandizer and a drinker:”1014
(finally), that so, too, does the
apostle teach that “food commendeth us not to God; since we
neither abound if we eat, nor lack if we eat not.”1015
By the instrumentalities of these and similar
passages, they subtlely tend at last to such a point, that every one
who is somewhat prone to appetite finds it possible to regard as
superfluous, and not so very necessary, the duties of abstinence from,
or diminution or delay of, food, since “God,” forsooth,
“prefers the works of justice and of innocence.” And
we know the quality of the hortatory addresses of carnal conveniences,
how easy it is to say, “I must believe with my whole
heart;1016
I must love God,
and my neighbour as myself:1017
for ‘on
these two precepts the whole Law hangeth, and the prophets,’ not
on the emptiness of my lungs and intestines.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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