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| Novatian, a Roman Presbyter, During His Retirement at the Time of the Decian Persecution, Being Urged by Various Letters from His Brethren, Had Written Two Earlier Epistles Against the Jews on the Subjects of Circumcision and the Sabbath, and Now Writes the Present One on the Jewish Meats.
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On the Jewish
Meats.5302
| 5302
Entitled “A Letter of Novatian, the Roman Presbyter.” |
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Chapter I.
Argument.—Novatian, a Roman Presbyter, During His
Retirement at the Time of the Decian Persecution, Being Urged by
Various Letters from His Brethren, Had Written Two Earlier Epistles
Against the Jews on the Subjects of Circumcision and the Sabbath, and
Now Writes the Present One on the Jewish Meats.
Although, most holy brethren, the day in which I
receive your letters and writings is most ardently longed for by me,
and to be reckoned among the chief and happiest—for what else is
there now to make me more joyous?5303
| 5303
“Liberiorem,” translated, according to a plausible
emendation, as “hilariorem.” | —still I think that the day is to
be deemed not less notable, and among special days, wherein I return to
you similar communications, with the affection of love that I owe you,
and write you letters with a corresponding interest. For nothing,
most holy brethren, holds me bound with such bonds, nothing stirs and
arouses me with such a stimulus of care and anxiety, as the fear lest
you should think that any disadvantage is suffered by you by reason of
my absence; and this I strive to remedy, in labouring to show myself
present with you by frequent letters. Although, therefore, the
duty which I owe, and the charge I have undertaken, and the very
ministerial office imposed upon me, require of me this necessity of
writing letters, yet you still further enhance it, by stirring me up to
write through means of your continual communications. And
inclined although I am to those periodical expressions of love, you
urge me the more by showing that you stand fast continually in the
Gospel: whence it results, that by my letters I am not so much
instructing you who are already informed, as inciting you who are
already prepared. For you, who not only hold the Gospel pure and
purged from all stain of perverse doctrine, but also energetically
teach the same, seek not man for a master, since you show yourselves by
these very things to be teachers. Therefore as you run, I exhort
you; and as you watch, I stir you up; and as you contend against
“the spiritual things of wickedness,”5304
I address you; and as you press
“in your course to the prize of your calling in
Christ,”5305
I urge you
on,—that, treading under foot and rejecting as well the
sacrilegious calumnies of heretics as also the idle fables of Jews, you
may hold the sole word5306
and teaching of Christ, so as worthily
to claim for yourselves the authority of His name. But how
perverse are the Jews, and remote from the understanding of their law,
I have fully shown, as I believe, in two former letters,5307
| 5307
These letters are not extant, but they are mentioned by Jerome,
De vir. Illustr., ch. lxx. | wherein it
was absolutely proved that they are ignorant of what is the true
circumcision, and what the true Sabbath; and their ever increasing
blindness is confuted in this present epistle, wherein I have briefly
discoursed concerning their meats, because that in them they consider
that they only are holy, and that all others are defiled.5308
| 5308
[1 Cor. vi. 13. A passage probably connected with
the Jewish superstition. But see the Peshito-Syriac version on
Mark vii. 19. Compare Murdock’s
version ad loc., ed. 1855.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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