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      Referring to the injunction of Jesus, “When thou makest an entertainment, call the poor,” for “whose sake chiefly a supper ought to be made,” Clement says of the rich:—

      “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. On 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 agricultural labourers than proprietors, and not only more vigorous but wiser than rich men. For they have not buried the mind beneath food. Wholly unnatural and inhuman is it for those who are of the earth, fattening, themselves like cattle, to feed themselves up for death.[68] Looking downwards on the earth, 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 for ever: so that cooks are held in higher esteem than the tillers of the ground. We do not abolish social intercourse, but we look with suspicion on the snares of Custom and regard them as a fatal mischief. Therefore daintiness must be spurned, and we are to partake of few and necessary things. … Nor is it suitable to eat and 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,’ aiming after true frugality, which Christ 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 diet. And the fish which, at the command of the Lord, Peter caught, points to digestible and God-given and moderate food. …

      We must guard against those sorts 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—vegetables, roots, olives, herbs, milk, cheese, fruits, and all kinds of dry food? ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ said the Lord to the disciples after the resurrection: and they, as taught by Him to practice frugality, ‘gave him a piece of broiled fish,’ and besides this, it is not to be overlooked that those who feed according to the Word are not debarred from dainties—such as honey combs. For of sorts of food those are the most proper which are fit for immediate use without fire, since they are readiest: and second to these are those which are the simplest, as we said before. But those who bend around inflammatory tables, nourishing their own diseases, are ruled by a most licentious disease which I shall venture to call the demon of the belly: and the worst and most vile of demons. It is far better to be happy than to have a devil dwelling in us: and happiness is found only in the practice of virtue. Accordingly the Apostle Matthew lived upon seeds and nuts, (Ακρόδρυα—hard-shelled fruits) and vegetables without the use of flesh. And John, who carried temperance to the extreme, ‘ate locusts and wild honey.’ ”

      As to the Jewish laws: “The Jews,” says Clement, “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 latter, indeed, they have trusted”:—

      

      “So that, altogether, but a few [animals] were left proper for their food. And of those which he permitted them to touch, he prohibited such as had died, or were offered to idols, or had been strangled: inasmuch as to touch these was unlawful. … Pleasure has often produced in men harm and pain, and full feeding begets in the soul uneasiness, and forgetfulness, and foolishness. It is said, moreover, that the bodies of children, when shooting up to their height, are made to grow right by abstinence in diet; 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 [to Syracuse] the life which is here called happy pleased me not by any means. 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 genius he may be endowed.’ For Plato was not unacquainted with David,[69] 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, men and women, to each a loaf of bread, and baked bread, and a cake from the frying-pan.’[70] This was the sufficient sustenance of the Israelites. But that of the Gentiles was over-abundant, and 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 onos 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 stomach, ‘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.’ ”[71]

      In treating of the subject of sacrifices, upon which he uses a good deal of sarcasm (in regard to the pagan sacrifices at least), Clement incidentally allows us to see, still further, his opinion respecting gross feeding. He quotes several of the Greek poets who ridicule the practice and pretence of sacrificial propitiation, e.g., Menander:—

      “the end of the loin,

      The gall, the bones uneatable, they give

      Alone to Heaven: the rest themselves consume.”

      “If, in fact,” remarks Clement, “the savour is the special desire of the Gods of the Greeks, should they not first deify the cooks, and worship the Chimney itself which is still closer to the much-prized savour?”

      “If,” he justly adds, “the deity need nothing, what need has he of food? Now, if nourishing matters taken in by the nostrils are diviner than those taken in by the mouth, yet they imply respiration. What then do they say of God? Does He exhale, like the oaks, or does he only inhale, like the aquatic animals by the dilatation of the gills, or does he breathe all around like the insects?”

      The only innocent altar he asserts to be the one allowed by Pythagoras:—

      “The very ancient altar in Delos was celebrated for its purity, to which alone, as being undefiled by slaughter and death, they say that Pythagoras would permit approach. And will they not believe us when we say that the righteous soul is the truly sacred altar? But I believe that sacrifices were invented by men to be a pretext for eating flesh, and yet, without such idolatry, they might have partaken of it.”

      He next glances at the popular reason for the Pythagorean abstinence, and declares:—

      “If any righteous man does not burden his soul by the eating of flesh, he has the advantage of a rational motive, not, as Pythagoras and his followers dream, of the transmigration of the soul. Now Xenokrates, treating of ‘Food derived from Animals,’[72] and Polemon in his work ‘On Life according to Nature,’[72] seem clearly to affirm that animal food is unwholesome. If it be said that the lower animals were assigned to man—and we partly admit it—yet it was not entirely for food; nor were all animals, but such as do not work. And so the comic poet, Plato, says not badly in the drama of The Feasts:—

      ‘For of the quadrupeds we should not slay

      In future aught but swine. For they have flesh

      Most delicate: and about the swine is nought

      For us: excepting bristles, dirt, and noise.’

      Some eat them as being useless, others as destructive of fruits, and others do not eat them because they are said to have strong propensity to coition. It is alleged that the greatest amount of fatty substance is produced by swine’s flesh: it may, then, be appropriate for those whose ambition is for the body; it is not so for those who cultivate the soul, by reason of the dulling of the faculties resulting from eating of flesh. The Gnostic, perhaps, too, will abstain for the sake of training, and that the body may not grow wanton in amorousness. ‘For wine,’ says Andokides, ‘and gluttonous feeds of flesh make the body strong, but the soul more sluggish.’ Accordingly such food, in order to a clear understanding, is to be rejected.”[73]

      In

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