Against Jovinian 2.7–2.15

We have set down these few things from the Scriptures to show that our views agree with the philosophers. But who does not know that each nation is accustomed to eat not by a common law of nature, but by what it has in plenty? For example, the Arabs and Saracens and all the barbarism of the desert live on the milk and flesh of camels, because, given the climate and barrenness of their regions, this kind of animal is easily born and raised among them. They think it a sin to eat the flesh of pigs; for swine, which are usually fed on acorns, chestnuts, fern roots, and barley, are found among them rarely or not at all, and if they are found, they lack the food we have mentioned. On the other hand, if you compel the northern peoples to eat asses and camels, they will think it like being forced to eat a wolf or a raven. In Pontus and Phrygia the head of the household exacts as a great revenue the white, fat worms with little black heads that are born in rotten wood. And as among us the francolin and the figpecker, the mullet and the parrot-fish are counted delicacies, so among them it is luxury to have eaten the wood-eater. Again, the peoples of the East and of Libya are accustomed to eat locusts, because clouds of locusts are found throughout the desert and the hot vastness of the wilderness. John the Baptist too proves this true. Compel a Phrygian or a Pontic to eat a locust, and he will think it a sin. Force a Syrian, an African, or an Arab to swallow the Pontic worms, and he will despise them as he would flies, millipedes, and lizards, although the Syrians are accustomed to eat land crocodiles and the Africans green lizards. In Egypt and Palestine, because of the scarcity of oxen, no one eats a cow, though they take the flesh of bulls, oxen, and calves as food. But in our province they think it a crime to devour calves. That is why the emperor Valens recently gave a law throughout the East that no one should eat the flesh of calves, providing for the good of agriculture and correcting the very bad custom of the Judaizing populace, who consumed calves instead of fatted fowls and sucklings. The Nomads, the Troglodytes, the Scythians, and the new savagery of the Huns eat half-raw flesh. Further, the Fish-eaters, a people wandering on the shore of the Red Sea, roast fish on rocks heated by the sun and live on this food alone. The Sarmatians, Quadi, Vandals, and countless other nations delight in the flesh of horses and foxes. Why speak of other nations, when I myself as a young man saw in Gaul the Atticoti, a British people, eating human flesh; and that, when they find herds of pigs and droves of cattle and sheep in the woods, they are accustomed to cut off the buttocks of the shepherds and the breasts of the women, and think these the only delicacies? The nation of the Scots has no wives of its own; as if they had read Plato's Republic and followed the example of Cato, no one among them has a wife of his own, but they run riot like cattle as each pleases. The Persians, Medes, Indians, and Ethiopians, kingdoms not small and equal to the Roman empire, have intercourse with mothers and grandmothers, with daughters and granddaughters. The Massagetae and Derbices think those most wretched who die of sickness; and when their parents, kinsmen, and relatives reach old age, they kill and devour them, thinking it better that they be eaten by themselves than by worms. The Tibareni hang on gibbets the old people they have loved. The Hyrcanians throw them half-alive to birds and dogs, the Caspians throw the dead to the same beasts. The Scythians bury alive, with the bones of the dead, those whom the dead loved. The Bactrians throw the old to dogs kept for this very purpose; and when Stasanor, Alexander's governor, wished to correct this, he almost lost his province. Compel an Egyptian to drink sheep's milk; induce, if you can, a man of Pelusium to eat an onion. Nearly every city in Egypt reveres its own beast and monster, and whatever it has worshiped it thinks inviolable and sacred. That is why their cities too are named after animals: Leonto, Cyno, Lyco, Busiris, Thmuis, which means "goat." And so that we might know what kind of gods Egypt has always received, one of their cities was recently named Antinous after Hadrian's favorite. You see, then, that not only in food but in burials, marriages, and every way of life each nation lives by its own rite and customs, and thinks what it has learned to be the law of nature. But suppose the eating of meat were common to all nations, and what is born everywhere were lawful everywhere: what is that to us, whose citizenship is in heaven, who, above Pythagoras and Empedocles and all the followers of wisdom, are indebted not to him to whom we are born but to him to whom we are reborn; who subdue the flesh that fights back and drags us to the incitements of lust? The eating of meat, the drinking of wine, and a full belly are the seedbed of lust. That is why the comic poet says: "Without Ceres and Liber, Venus grows cold."

Through the five senses, as through certain windows, the vices have their entry to the soul. The capital and citadel of the mind cannot be taken unless the hostile army has burst in through its gates. The soul is weighed down by their disturbances, and is captured by sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. If anyone delights in the races of the Circus, in the contests of athletes, in the agility of actors, in the beauty of women, in the splendor of jewels, clothes, and metals, and other things of this kind, the freedom of the soul has been captured through the windows of the eyes, and that prophetic saying is fulfilled: "Death has come in through your windows." Again, the hearing is charmed by the varied music of instruments and the modulations of voices; and by the songs of poets and comedies, and the witticisms and tricks of mimes, whatever enters through the ears makes the manliness of the mind effeminate. As for the sweetness of scents, the various perfumes, amomum, kyphi, oenanthe, musk, and the little skin of the foreign mouse, that they suit the dissolute and lovers no one denies but the dissolute. Further, who does not know that greed for food is the mother of avarice, and holds the soul down on the earth, weighed as it were with fetters? For the brief pleasure of the gullet, lands and seas are searched; and so that honeyed wine and costly food may pass down our throats, we sweat at the labor of our whole life. And the touch of others' bodies, and the more ardent desire for women, is close to madness. Because of this sense we desire, we are angry, we exult, we envy, we compete, we are anxious; and when the pleasure is satisfied, through a kind of regret we are kindled again, and we seek to do what, when we have done it, we will again regret. When, then, through these gates the wedges, as it were, of the disturbances have entered the citadel of our mind, where will its freedom be, where its strength, where the thought of God? Especially when touch paints for itself even past pleasures, and by the memory of vices compels the soul to share in them and in a way to commit what it does not do.

Invited by these reasons, many philosophers left the crowds of cities and the suburban gardens, where there were watered fields, leafy trees, the twittering of birds, the mirror of a spring, a murmuring stream, and many allurements of eyes and ears, lest through luxury and abundance of supplies the strength of the soul should grow soft and its chastity be violated. For it is useless to see often the things by which you were once captured, and to trust yourself to the experience of things you can hardly do without. For the Pythagoreans too, avoiding crowds of this kind, used to live in solitude and deserted places. The Platonists and Stoics also spent their time in the groves and porticoes of temples, so that, reminded by the holiness of a narrower dwelling, they might think of nothing but the virtues. And Plato himself, though he was rich and Diogenes trampled on his couches with muddy feet, chose, so as to be free for philosophy, the Academy, a country house far from the city, not only deserted but unhealthy, so that the onset of lust might be broken by care and the constant presence of disease, and his disciples might feel no other pleasure than that of the things they were learning. We read that some put out their own eyes so as not to be called away from the contemplation of philosophy by the sight of them. That is why the famous Crates of Thebes, throwing a considerable weight of gold into the sea, said: "Go to the bottom, evil desires; I will drown you, lest I be drowned by you." But if anyone thinks he can both enjoy abundance of food and drink and be free for wisdom, that is, both live in delights and not be held by the vices of delights, he deceives himself. For if, even when far removed from these, we are often captured by the allurements of nature and forced to desire what we have not in plenty, how much more if, surrounded by the nets of pleasures, we think ourselves free! Our sense thinks of what it sees, hears, smells, tastes, touches, and is drawn to desire the thing by whose pleasure it is captured. That the mind sees and the mind hears, and that we can neither hear nor see anything unless the sense is directed to what we see and hear, is also an old saying. It is difficult, indeed impossible, for those abounding in delights and pleasures not to think of what they are doing; and in vain do some pretend that they use pleasures with their faith, chastity, and integrity of mind unharmed, since it is against nature to enjoy abundance of pleasures without effect; and the Apostle, guarding against this very thing, said: "She who lives in pleasures is dead while she lives."

The bodily senses are like horses running without reason, while the soul, like a charioteer, holds the reins of the runners. And as horses without a driver rush headlong, so the body without the reason and command of the soul is carried to its own destruction. The philosophers also give another comparison of soul and body, saying that the body is a boy and the soul his tutor. That is why the historian says: "We use the soul to rule, the body rather to serve; the one we have in common with the gods, the other with the beasts." So unless the tutor's prudence governs the faults of the youth and boy, all his efforts and impulses hurry toward wantonness. We can live without four of the senses, that is, without sight, hearing, smell, and touch; but without taste and food it is impossible for the human body to subsist. Reason, then, must be present, so that we take such and so much food as will not burden the body or weigh down the freedom of the soul; for we must eat, and walk, and sleep, and digest, and afterwards, with the veins swollen, endure the incitements of lust. "Wine is a wanton thing, and drunkenness insolent; whoever mixes with them will not be wise." Nor let us take foods which we either digest with difficulty, or, having eaten, regret as lost with great pain and labor. Vegetables, fruit, and pulse are more easily prepared, and need no art or expense of cooks; they sustain the human body without trouble, and, taken in moderation (for what has no allurements for the gullet is not greedily devoured), they are digested more lightly. For no one is loaded with one or two foods, and those cheap, to the point of the swelling of the belly that is produced by the variety of meats and the delight of flavor. When dishes steam with various savors, they drag us, as it were, captive to eat them after hunger is satisfied. That is why diseases are stirred up by excessive fullness; and many remedy the intemperance of the gullet by vomiting, and what they shamefully put in they more shamefully put out.

Hippocrates teaches in his Aphorisms that stout and fat bodies which have reached the full measure of growth, unless they are quickly reduced by letting blood, break out into paralysis and the worst kinds of disease; and that therefore reduction is necessary, so that they may again have room to grow. For the nature of bodies does not remain in one state, but always either grows or decreases, and a living creature cannot live unless it is capable of growth. That is why Galen too, a most learned man, the interpreter of Hippocrates, says in his Exhortation to Medicine that athletes, whose life and art is fattening, can neither live long nor be healthy, and that their souls, wrapped as it were in mud by too much blood and fat, think nothing fine, nothing heavenly, but always of meat and belching and the gluttony of the belly. Diogenes asserts that tyrants and the overthrowing of cities, and wars both foreign and civil, are stirred up not for a simple diet of vegetables and fruit, but for meat and the delights of banquets. And what is surprising, Epicurus, the champion of pleasure, filled all his books with vegetables and fruit, and says that one should live on cheap foods, because meat and choice banquets are prepared with great care and misery, and bring more pain in the seeking than pleasure in the using. Our bodies need only food and drink. Where there is water and bread and the like, nature is satisfied. Whatever is beyond this does not concern the necessity of life but the vice of pleasure. To drink and to eat is to quench thirst and hunger, not the heat of delights. Those who eat meat need also things that are not meat; but those who use a simple diet do not require meat. Nor can we give our attention to wisdom if we think of an abundant table, which needs excessive labor and care. The need of nature is soon satisfied: cold and hunger can be driven off by simple clothing and food. That is why the Apostle says: "Having food and clothing, let us be content with these." Delicacies and varieties of dishes are the kindling of avarice. It is a great exultation of the soul, when you are content with little, to have the world under your feet, and to exchange all its power, its banquets and lusts, for the sake of which riches are acquired, for cheap foods, and to make up for them with a coarser tunic. Take away the luxury of banquets and lust, and no one will seek riches, whose use is either in the belly or under the belly. A sick man recovers health only by light food and a restrained diet, which is called leptē diaita. The foods, then, by which health is recovered can also preserve it, lest anyone think that diseases are stirred up by vegetables. And if vegetables do not supply the strength of the famous Milo of Croton, which is born and fed from meat, what need has the wise man and philosopher of Christ of such great strength, which is necessary for athletes and soldiers, and which, when he has it, will provoke him to vices? Let those think meat suitable for health who wish to indulge their lust and, sunk in the mire, are always burning for intercourse. A Christian needs health without excessive strength. Nor should it trouble us if the followers of this way of life are few; for good and faithful friends, the chaste and continent, are few, and virtue is always rare. Read of the continence of Fabricius and the poverty of Curius, and in so great a city you will hardly find a few to follow. Do not fear that, if you do not eat meat, fowlers and hunters will have learned their arts in vain.

We read of some who suffered from arthritis and gouty humors who, when reduced by the confiscation of their goods to a simple table and poor food, recovered. For they had been freed from the care of managing a household and from lavish banquets, which break both body and soul. Horace mocks the appetite for foods which, once consumed, leave regret:

Dicaearchus, in his books of Antiquities and his Description of Greece, reports that under Saturn, that is, in the golden age, when the ground poured forth everything, no one ate meat, but all lived on the grains and fruits that the earth produced of itself. Xenophon sets out the life of Cyrus, king of the Persians, in eight volumes, asserting that they lived on barley groats, cress, salt, and coarse bread. Of the tables and frugality of the Lacedaemonians the aforesaid Xenophon and Theophrastus and almost all the writers of Greece are witnesses. Chaeremon the Stoic, a most eloquent man, tells in his account of the life of the ancient priests of Egypt that, putting aside all the business and cares of the world, they were always in the temple; they contemplated the natures of things and the causes and courses of the stars; they never had relations with women; never saw their kinsfolk and relatives, not even their children, from the time they began to devote themselves to divine worship; they always abstained from meat and wine, because of the fineness of perception and because of the giddiness of head which they suffered from little food, and above all because of the desires of lust which arise from these foods and this drink. They rarely ate bread, so as not to burden the stomach; and if they ever ate it, they took pounded hyssop with it in their food, so as to digest the heavier food by its heat. They knew oil only with vegetables, and even that sparingly, to soften the nausea and harshness of the taste. "What shall I say," he says, "of birds, when they avoided even eggs and milk as meat, saying that the one is liquid flesh and the other blood with its color changed?" Their bed was woven of palm leaves, which they call baiae; a sloping stool, slanting on one side, they set on the ground as a pillow for the head, enduring fasts of two and three days. The humors of the body, which arise from idleness and staying in one place, they dried up by very strict control of diet.

Josephus, in the second book of the History of the Jewish Captivity, in the eighteenth book of the Antiquities, and in the two volumes Against Apion, describes three schools of the Jews: Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. The last he extols with wonderful praises, because they always abstained from wives, wine, and meat, and turned daily fasting into a second nature. Philo too, a most learned man, published a volume of his own on their life. Neanthes of Cyzicus and Asclepiades of Cyprus write that in the age when Pygmalion reigned in the East there was no eating of meat. Eubulus too, who set out the history of Mithras in many volumes, tells that among the Persians there are three kinds of magi, of whom the first, who are most learned and eloquent, take nothing as food except meal and vegetables. At Eleusis it is customary to abstain even from birds and fish and certain fruits. Bardesanes, a Babylonian, divides the gymnosophists among the Indians into two schools, one of which he calls the Brahmans, the other the Samanaeans; they are of such continence that they live either on the fruit of the trees beside the river Ganges, or on the public food of rice or meal; and when the king comes to them he is accustomed to adore them, and to think that the peace of his province rests on their prayers. Euripides reports that the prophets of Jupiter in Crete abstained not only from meat but also from cooked foods. Xenocrates the philosopher writes that of the laws of Triptolemus only three precepts remain in the temple of Eleusis among the Athenians: honor parents, revere the gods, do not eat meat. Orpheus in his poem utterly detests the eating of meat. I would relate the frugality of Pythagoras, Socrates, Antisthenes, and the rest, to our confusion, were it not long and in need of a work of its own. This certainly is that Antisthenes who, after he had taught rhetoric with distinction and heard Socrates, is said to have said to his disciples: "Go and look for a teacher; for I have now found one." And at once selling what he had and distributing it publicly, he kept nothing more for himself than a little cloak. Of his poverty and labor Xenophon too is witness in the Symposium, and his own countless books, some of which he wrote in the philosophic style, others in the rhetorical. His follower was that most famous Diogenes, more powerful than King Alexander and conqueror of human nature. For when Antisthenes would accept no disciples and could not get rid of the persistent Diogenes, he at last threatened him with a stick unless he went away. Diogenes is said to have put his head under it and said: "No stick will be so hard as to separate me from your service." Satyrus, who writes the histories of illustrious men, reports that Diogenes used a double cloak because of the cold, had a bag for a storeroom, and carried a stick because of the frailty of his body, with which, now an old man, he used to support his limbs; and that he was commonly called hēmerobios, "living for the day," asking anyone for food for the present hour and receiving it. He lived in the porches of gates and the colonnades of cities. And when he rolled himself about in his jar, he joked that he had a movable house that changed with the seasons. For in the cold he turned the mouth of the jar to the south, in summer to the north, and however the sun inclined, Diogenes's palace turned with it. Once, having a wooden cup to drink from, he saw a boy drinking from his cupped hand, and is said to have dashed it to the ground, saying: "I did not know that nature too had a cup." His death too shows his virtue and continence. For when, already an old man, he was going to the Olympic games, which were celebrated with a great crowd of Greece, he is said to have been seized with a fever on the way and to have lain down at the edge of the road. When his friends wished to lift him onto a beast or into a carriage, he would not consent, but, moving to the shade of a tree, said: "Go away, I beg you, and go on to see the games. This night will prove me either victor or vanquished. If I conquer the fever, I will come to the games; if the fever conquers me, I will go down to the underworld." And there in the night, choking, he said that he was not so much dying as shutting out the fever by death. I have given the example of only one philosopher, so that our pretty, muscular gentlemen, who hardly touch the ground with the tips of their toes, whose words are in their fists and their syllogisms in their heels, who either do not know or despise the poverty of the apostles and the hardness of the cross, may at least imitate the frugality of the pagans.

So much on the arguments and examples of the philosophers. Now, passing to the beginning of the human race, that is, to our own writings, I will show first that Adam received the command in paradise to eat of the other fruits but to fast from one tree. The blessedness of paradise could not be consecrated without abstinence from food. As long as he fasted, he was in paradise; he ate and was thrown out; thrown out, he at once married a wife. He who, fasting, had been a virgin in paradise, is joined in marriage on earth when full. And yet, thrown out, he did not at once receive permission to eat meat; only the fruits of trees, the grain of crops, and green herbs were given him as food, so that even as an exile from paradise he should eat not meat, which was not in paradise, but things like the fruits of paradise. But afterwards God, seeing that the heart of man was set diligently on evil from youth, and that his spirit could not remain in them because they were flesh, condemned the works of the flesh by the flood; and, approving the most greedy gullet of men, gave them permission to eat meat, so that, understanding that all things were allowed them, they might not greatly desire what was allowed, lest they turn the command into an occasion of transgression. And yet even then fasting was commanded in part. For since some animals are called clean and others unclean, and into Noah's ark the unclean were brought in by twos and the clean in odd numbers (and certainly the eating of the unclean was taken away, or they would not have been called unclean without cause), fasting was dedicated in part, teaching abstinence from all things by cutting off some. Why did Esau lose his birthright? Was it not because of food? And he could not repair the intemperance of his gullet with tears. The people of Israel, cast out of Egypt and about to be brought into the land of promise flowing with milk and honey, long for the meats of Egypt, and melons and garlic, saying: "Would that we had died, struck by the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat!" And again: "Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing, and the cucumbers and melons, the leeks, onions, and garlic. But now our soul is dried up; our eyes see nothing but manna." Despising the food of angels, they sighed for the meats of Egypt. Moses, fasting forty days and nights on Mount Sinai, proving even then that man does not live by bread alone but by every word of God, speaks with the Lord; but the people, full, make idols. He, with empty belly, receives the law written by the finger of God; they, eating and drinking and rising up to play, cast gold into a calf, and prefer an Egyptian ox to the majesty of the Lord. The labor of so many days perishes by one hour's fullness. Moses boldly breaks the tablets; for he knew that the drunken could not hear the word of God. "The beloved grew fat and stout and broad, and kicked, and forsook the Lord who made him, and departed from God his savior." That is why it is commanded in the same Deuteronomy: "Lest, when you have eaten and drunk and built fine houses, and your sheep and oxen have multiplied, and your silver and gold, your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God." Finally, "the people ate, and their heart grew fat, so that they might not see with their eyes, or hear with their ears, or understand with their heart"; and the people, fed and fatter, could not bear the face of Moses fasting, horned, according to the Hebrew truth, by his conversation with God. That is why our Lord and Savior, not because of the indifference of virginity and marriage, as some think, but because of their partnership in fasting, showed Moses and Elijah with him in glory when he was transfigured on the mountain. And yet Moses and Elijah properly showed a type of the Law and the Prophets, as the Scripture of the Gospel plainly testifies: "They spoke to him of his departure which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem." For it is not virginity and marriage, but the Law and the Prophets that announce the Lord's passion. But if they contentiously say that marriage is shown in Moses and virginity in Elijah, let them hear briefly that Moses died and was buried, while Elijah, caught up in a chariot of fire, began to be immortal before he was dead. Nor could the second writing of the tablets be obtained without fasting. What drunkenness had lost, abstinence recovered. From this it is shown that we can return by fasting to paradise, from which we were thrown out by fullness. In Exodus the battle against Amalek was fought, by the prayer of Moses and of the whole people, with fasting until evening. Joshua the son of Nun commanded the sun and moon to stand still, and prolonged the fast of the victorious army for more than one day. Saul, as is written in the first book of Kingdoms, said: "Cursed be he who eats bread until evening, until I take vengeance on my enemies." And all his people did not taste, though the whole land was eating. And so great was the authority of the station once appointed to the Lord that Jonathan, who had been the cause of the victory, was detected by lot and could not escape the charge of ignorance, and stirred up his father's hand against himself, and was barely saved by the people's prayers. Elijah, prepared by a fast of forty days, saw God on Mount Horeb and heard from him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?" This voice is far more familiar than that in Genesis, "Adam, where are you?" For that one terrified a man fed and lost; this one caressed a fasting servant. Samuel strengthened the people gathered at Mizpah by proclaiming a fast, and made them stronger than their enemies. The onslaught of the Assyrians and the power of Sennacherib were broken, laid low, and defeated by King Hezekiah's tears, sackcloth, and humbling of his diet. And on the contrary, the city of Nineveh turned aside the threatened wrath of the Lord by the pity won by fasting; and Sodom and Gomorrah too would have appeased it had they been willing to repent and to win over tears of repentance with the advocacy of fasting. Ahab, a most impious king, obtained by fasting and sackcloth that he should escape God's sentence and the overthrow of his house be put off to his descendants. Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, earned by an empty belly the filling of her womb with a son. In Babylon the magi are in danger, every diviner and soothsayer and haruspex is cut down; Daniel and the three young men earn a revelation by fasting, and, fed on pulse, they are handsomer and wiser than those who ate the meat of the king's table. Then it is written that Daniel fasted three weeks, did not eat pleasant bread, that meat and wine did not enter his mouth, that he was not anointed with oil; and the angel came to him, saying, "Daniel, you are a man to be pitied." He who had appeared pitiable to God was, after his fast, terrible to the lions in the den. How beautiful a thing, which appeases God, tames lions, terrifies demons! Habakkuk is sent to him (though we have not found this in the Hebrew volumes) carrying the reapers' dinner. For a week's abstinence had earned such a waiter. David, when his son was in danger after the adultery, makes confession in ashes and fasting, saying: "For I ate ashes like bread, and mixed my drink with weeping"; and, "My knees are weak through fasting." And certainly he had already heard from Nathan, "The Lord has taken away your sin." Samson and Samuel do not drink wine and strong drink; for they were children of promise, conceived through abstinence and fasting. Aaron and the other priests, when about to enter the temple, do not drink anything that can intoxicate, lest they die. From this we understand that those die who minister in the Church without being sober. That is why Israel is reproached: "You gave my Nazirites wine to drink." Jonadab the son of Rechab commanded his sons never to drink wine. When Jeremiah offered them wine to drink and they refused, the Lord says through the prophet: "Because you have obeyed the command of Jonadab your father, a man of the line of Jonadab son of Rechab shall not fail to stand before me all the days." At the doors of the Gospel Anna the daughter of Phanuel is brought in, married once, and always fasting; and long chastity and long fasts received the virgin Lord. His forerunner and herald John is fed on locusts and wild honey, not meat; and the dwelling in the desert and the cradle of the monks begin with such food. And the Lord himself dedicated his baptism with a fast of forty days, and taught that the fiercer demons can be overcome only by prayer and fasting. The centurion Cornelius earned, by alms and frequent fasts, to receive the Holy Spirit before baptism. The apostle Paul, after hunger and thirst and his other labors, and the dangers of robbers, shipwrecks, and solitudes, lists frequent fasts. And to his disciple Timothy, suffering in his stomach and enduring very many illnesses, he urges a moderate drink of wine: "No longer drink water," he says. But in saying to him, "No longer drink water," he shows that he had drunk water before. He would not have allowed this had not frequent illnesses and pain of the stomach demanded it.