On the Catholic Way of Life and On the Manichaean Way of Life 2.13–2.15

Since these blasphemies, coming from the heart, dwell daily in your mouth, cease at last to proclaim the seal of your mouth as something great, to allure the ignorant. Unless perhaps you think the seal of the mouth wonderful and praiseworthy because you do not eat meat and do not drink wine. I ask you for what end you do this. For if the end to which the things we do are referred, that is, the end for the sake of which we do whatever we do, is not only blameless but also praiseworthy, then and only then are our deeds also worthy of some praise; but if the end we look to and keep in view when engaged in some duty is justly and deservedly blamed, no one will doubt that that duty too must be disapproved and blamed.

It is recorded of Catiline that he could bear cold, thirst, and hunger. These things that foul and sacrilegious man had in common even with our apostles. How then is that parricide distinguished from our apostles, except by the end he pursued, which was utterly different? For he endured these things in order to satisfy most unbridled and monstrous desires; they on the contrary in order to suppress them and force them to serve reason as master. You too, when the multitude of catholic virgins is proclaimed to you, are accustomed to say, “A mule is a virgin too.” Rashly indeed, through ignorance of catholic teaching; but still you mean that such continence is empty unless it is referred by sure reasoning to some most right end. Catholic Christians too could compare your abstinence from wine and meat to beasts of burden and many sparrows, and finally to countless kinds of worms. But so as not to fall into your rashness, I will not do this hastily, but will first examine for what end you do these things. For it is agreed between us, I think, that in morals of this kind nothing else is to be sought. If, then, you do it for the sake of frugality and of restraining the lust by which we are delighted and captured by such foods and drink, I hear and approve: but it is not so.

For I ask you: suppose there is someone, as there may be, a man so sparing and frugal that, moderating the appetite of belly and throat, he does not feast twice in one day; and at his supper a few vegetables are set before him with a little lard, greased and seasoned with that same lard, as much as suffices to suppress hunger; and he quenches his thirst, for the sake of careful health, with two or three cups of unmixed wine, and this is his daily fare: while another, for his part, tasting no meat and no wine, gladly takes at the ninth hour choice and foreign produce, varied in many courses and sprinkled with plenty of pepper, intending to sup on the same at nightfall too; and drinks mead, boiled-down wine, raisin wine, and the pressed juices of some fruits, which imitate wine closely enough and even surpass it in sweetness; and drinks not as much as he is thirsty but as much as he likes; and sees to it that this is supplied to him daily, and enjoys such fare and delicacies from no necessity but with great pleasure: which of these two, as concerns eating and drinking, do you judge to lead the more abstinent life? I do not think you are so blind as not to prefer the man of the scanty lard and wine to this glutton. So truth compels; but your error sings a very different tune. For your Elect, proclaimed for his three seals, if he lives daily like the man we described second, may be rebuked by one or perhaps two of the stricter among you, but cannot at all be condemned as a breaker of the seal. But if he sups once with the first man, and greases his lips with a scrap of bacon, even rancid, and wets them with flat wine, he will at once be judged a breaker of the seal and destined for Gehenna by the sentence of your founder, to your amazement, but with your agreement. I beg you, abandon error; I beg you, attend to reason; I beg you, resist habit a little. For what is more perverse than this depravity? What more crazy? What more insane can be said or thought than that a man belching with satisfaction from a stomach stretched with mushrooms, rice, truffles, cakes, boiled wine, pepper, and silphium, and seeking such things daily, cannot be found to have fallen from the three seals, that is, from the rule of holiness; while another, seasoning very cheap produce with smoked meat, taking only as much of it as suffices to refresh the body, and sipping three cups of wine to keep up his health, should be destined for sure punishment if he passes from the first fare to the second?

But, you say, the Apostle says, “It is good, brothers, not to eat meat nor to drink wine.” As if any of us denied that it is good! But it is good either for the end I mentioned above, according to which it is said, “And make no provision for the flesh in its desires”; or for those ends which the same Paul shows elsewhere: that is, either to bridle gluttony, which is usually carried away more wildly and immoderately by these things; or so that a brother may not be offended, or so that the weak may not share in an idol. For at the time when the Apostle wrote this, much meat offered in sacrifice was sold in the market. And because wine too was poured out to the gods of the Gentiles, many weaker brothers, who also used these things on sale, preferred to abstain from meat and wine altogether rather than fall even unknowingly into what they thought was communion with idols. And because of them even those who were stronger, and had judged with greater faith that these things should be disregarded, knowing that nothing is unclean except through a bad conscience, and holding to that saying of the Lord, “Not what goes into your mouth defiles you, but what comes out,” were nevertheless bound to abstain from these things because of these weaker ones, so that they might not be offended. And this is not gathered by conjecture, but is found plainly in the Apostle's letters themselves. For you usually say to us only, “It is good, brothers, not to eat meat nor to drink wine,” but do not add what follows, “nor anything by which your brother is offended, or caused to stumble, or made weak.” For from this it is clear for what end the Apostle commanded these things. What comes before and after shows it more plainly; it is long to recount, but for the sake of those who are slow to read and study the divine Scriptures we are compelled to go over the whole passage.

“Receive one who is weak in faith,” he says, “not for disputes over opinions. One believes he may eat all things; but let him who is weak eat vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat; and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats; for God has received him. Who are you who judge another's servant? To his own Lord he stands or falls; and he will stand, for God is able to make him stand. For one judges one day above another, another judges every day alike: let each abound in his own mind. He who regards the day regards it for the Lord; and he who eats, eats for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who does not eat, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for himself, and none dies for himself. For if we live, we live for the Lord; if we die, we die for the Lord. So whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both lived and died and rose again, that he might be Lord both of the living and of the dead. But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written: ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.’ So each of us will give account of himself to God. Let us therefore no longer judge one another, but judge this rather, not to put a stumbling block or occasion of offense before a brother. I know and am confident in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean through him; but to him who thinks anything unclean, to him it is unclean. For if your brother is grieved because of food, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not by your food destroy him for whom Christ died. So let not our good be blasphemed. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in this pleases God and is approved by men. So let us pursue the things that make for peace and the things that build one another up. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but it is evil for the man who eats with offense. It is good not to eat meat and not to drink wine, nor anything by which your brother is offended, or caused to stumble, or made weak. You have faith: have it to yourself before God. Blessed is he who does not judge himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because it is not of faith; and whatever is not of faith is sin. We who are stronger ought to bear the weaknesses of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself.”

Is it not clear enough that the Apostle commanded all who were stronger not to eat meat or drink wine, because they offended the weak by not accommodating themselves to them, and made them think that those who judged by faith that all things are clean would not abstain from such food and drink in deference to idols? He means this too when he writes to the Corinthians thus: “As for food offered in sacrifice to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no God but one. For although there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. But not all have this knowledge. Some, by their conscience, even until now eat it as food offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. But food does not commend us to God. For neither if we eat shall we have more, nor if we do not eat shall we lack. But take care lest this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees one who has knowledge reclining at table in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, being weak, be built up to eat food offered to idols? And the weak brother, for whom Christ died, will perish through your knowledge. And so, sinning against the brothers and wounding their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to stumble.” Again in another place: “What then? Do I say that what is sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? But what the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to become partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own, but each the other's. Eat whatever is sold in the market, asking no questions for conscience' sake. But if anyone says, ‘This has been sacrificed to idols,’ do not eat, for the sake of the one who pointed it out, and for conscience' sake: I mean not your own conscience, but the other's. For why should my liberty be judged by another's conscience? If I partake with thanks, why am I blasphemed for that for which I give thanks? So whether you eat or drink, or do anything else, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I please everyone in everything, not seeking my own advantage, but that of the many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

It is clear, then, I think, for what end one should abstain from meat and wine. This end is threefold: to suppress the pleasure that is usually found especially in these foods, and in such drink even to the point of drunkenness; to protect weakness, because of the things that are sacrificed and poured out to idols; and, what is most to be commended, for the sake of love, lest the weakness of the weaker, who abstain from these things, be offended. But you say that dishes of meat are unclean, though the Apostle says that all things are clean, but that it is evil for him who eats with offense. And indeed I believe that you are defiled by these foods precisely because you think them unclean. For he says: “I believe and am confident in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean through him; but to him who thinks anything unclean, to him it is unclean.” And who doubts that by “unclean” (commune) he meant impure and defiled? But it is foolish to argue with you from the Scriptures, since you deceive by promising reason, and say that those books, in which there is the great authority of religion, are corrupted by the insertion of false passages. So persuade me by reason how meats defile the one who eats them, if they are taken without any offense, without any weak opinion, and without any lust.

It is worth knowing the whole rationale of this superstitious abstinence, which is given thus. “Because,” he says, “a member of God was mixed with the substance of evil, in order to bridle it and restrain it from its utmost fury” (for so you say), “the world was built from the mixture of both natures, that is, of good and evil. And that divine part is purified daily from every part of the world and taken back into its own kingdoms: but as it is breathed out through the earth and rises toward heaven, it runs into plants, since they are fixed to the earth by their roots, and so it makes all grasses and all shrubs fruitful and vigorous. From these the animals take food, and when they mate they bind that divine member in the flesh, and, turning it from its proper course and hindering it, entangle it in wanderings and hardships. So if foods prepared from produce and fruits come to the saints, that is, to the Manichaeans, then through their chastity, prayers, and psalms whatever in them is bright and divine is purified, that is, perfected in every respect, so that it may be carried back to its own kingdoms without any hindrance from filth.” That is why you forbid giving bread or any produce, or even water, which is cheap to all, to a beggar who is not a Manichaean, lest the member of God that is mixed with these things, defiled by his sins, be hindered from its return. But meat, you say, is already compacted of the filth itself. For some of that divine part, as you claim, escapes when produce and fruits are picked; it escapes when they are afflicted by threshing, grinding, or cooking, or even by biting and chewing. It escapes also in all the movements of animals, when they frisk, when they exercise, when they labor, or when they do anything at all. It escapes also during our rest, while what is called digestion is carried on in the body by the inner heat. And so, with the divine nature escaping on so many occasions, something most filthy remains, from which flesh is formed through mating; yet with a soul of the good kind, since much, though not all, of the good flies off by the movements mentioned. Therefore, when the soul too has left the flesh, an excessive filth remains, and so the soul of those who eat meat is defiled.