as living most abstemiously in food and drink? You cannot surely be so blind as not to put
the man of the little lard and wine above this glutton!
30. This is the true view; but your doctrine sounds very differently. For one of your
elect distinguished by the three symbols may live like the second person in this description,
and though he may be reproved by one or two of the more sedate, he cannot be condemned
as abusing the symbols. But should he sup with the other person, and moisten his lips with
a morsel of rancid bacon, or refresh them with a drink of spoilt wine, he is pronounced a
transgressor of the symbol, and by the judgment of your founder is consigned to hell, while
you, though wondering, must assent. Will you not discard these errors? Will you not listen
to reason? Will you not offer some little resistance to the force of habit? Is not such doctrine
most unreasonable? Is it not insanity? Is it not the greatest absurdity that one, who stuffs
and loads his stomach every day to gratify his appetite with mushrooms, rice, truffles, cake,
mead, pepper, and assafœtida, and who fares thus every day, cannot be convicted of trans-
gressing the three symbols, that is, the rule of sanctity; whereas another, who seasons his
dish of the commonest herbs with some smoky morsel of meat, and takes only so much of
this as is needed for the refreshment of his body, and drinks three cups of wine for the sake
of keeping in health, should, for exchanging the former diet for this, be doomed to certain
punishment?
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Actions to Be Judged of from Their Motive, Not from Externals. Manichæan…