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| Of the Apostle's Language Concerning Food.
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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, “undo1101
the work of
God.” What “work?” That about which he
says,1102
“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;”1103
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:”1104
| 1104 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;”1105
teaching “to
labour for the meat which is permanent unto life
eternal;”1106
in our ordinary
prayer likewise commanding us to request “bread,”1107
not the wealth of Attalus1108
| 1108 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;”1109
but such an one as He has subjoined, and by
subjoining has not abolished, but confirmed.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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