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Chapter
XXIII.
But the majority of those who are accounted
believers are not of this advanced class; but from being either unable
or unwilling to keep every day in this manner, they require some
sensible memorials to prevent spiritual things from passing altogether
away from their minds. It is to this practice of setting apart
some days distinct from others, that Paul seems to me to refer in the
expression, “part of the feast;”4884
4884 Col. ii. 16. The whole passage in the
English version is, “Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink,
or in respect of an holyday” (ἐν
μέρει
ἑορτῆς). Origen’s
interpretation is not followed by any modern expositors. It is
adopted by Chrysostom and Theodoret. |
and by these words he indicates that a life in accordance with the
divine word consists not “in a part of the feast,” but in
one entire and never ceasing festival.4885
4885 [Dr. Hessey
notes this as “a curious comment” of Origen’s on St.
Paul’s language: Bampton Lectures, On Sunday: its
Origin, History, and Present Obligation, pp. 48, 286–289, 4th
ed. S.] | Again, compare the festivals, observed
among us as these have been described above, with the public feasts of
Celsus and the heathen, and say if the former are not much more sacred
observances than those feasts in which the lust of the flesh runs riot,
and leads to drunkenness and debauchery. It would be too long for
us at present to show why we are required by the law of God to keep its
festivals by eating “the bread of affliction,”4886 or “unleavened with bitter
herbs,”4887 or why it says,
“Humble your souls,”4888 and such
like. For it is impossible for man, who is a compound being, in
which “the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh,”4889 to keep the feast
with his whole nature; for either he keeps the feast with his spirit
and afflicts the body, which through the lust of the flesh is unfit to
keep it along with the spirit, or else he keeps it with the body, and
the spirit is unable to share in it. But we have for the present
said enough on the subject of feasts.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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