Testimonia

{"author":null,"backreferences":[{"context_html":"<p>For my part, I am sorry for this disease, while they are not ashamed\r\nto sing the praises of their delicacies, giving themselves great\r\ntrouble to get lampreys in the Straits of Sicily, the eels of the\r\nMæander, and the kids found in Melos, and the mullets in Sciathus,\r\nand the mussels of Pelorus, the oysters of Abydos, not omitting the\r\nsprats found in Lipara, and the Mantinican turnip; and furthermore,\r\nthe beetroot that grows among the Ascræans: they seek out the cockles\r\nof Methymna, the turbots of Attica, and the thrushes of Daphnis, and\r\nthe reddish-brown dried figs, on account of which the ill-starred\r\nPersian marched into Greece with five hundred thousand men. Besides\r\nthese, they purchase birds from Phasis, the Egyptian snipes, and the\r\nMedian peafowl. Altering these by means of condiments, the gluttons\r\ngape for the sauces. “Whatever earth and the depths of the sea,\r\nand the unmeasured space of the air produce,” they cater for their\r\ngluttony. In their greed and solicitude, the gluttons seem absolutely\r\nto sweep the world with a drag-net to gratify their luxurious tastes.\r\nThese gluttons, surrounded with the sound of hissing frying-pans,\r\nand wearing their whole life away at the pestle<span class=\"pagenum\" id=\"Page_188\">[188]</span> and mortar, cling\r\nto matter like fire. More than that, they emasculate plain food,\r\nnamely bread, by straining off the nourishing part of the grain, so\r\nthat the necessary part of food becomes matter of reproach to luxury.\r\nThere is no limit to epicurism among men. For it has driven them to\r\nsweetmeats, and honey-cakes, and sugar-plums; inventing a multitude\r\nof desserts, hunting after all manner of dishes. A man like this\r\nseems to me to be all jaw, and nothing else. “Desire not,” says the\r\nScripture, “rich men’s dainties;”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_416\" id=\"FNanchor_416\">[416]</a> for they belong to a false\r\nand base life. They partake of luxurious dishes, which a little\r\nafter go to the dunghill. But we who seek the heavenly bread must\r\nrule the belly, which is beneath heaven, and much more the things\r\nwhich are agreeable to it, which “God shall destroy,”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_417\" id=\"FNanchor_417\">[417]</a> says the\r\napostle, justly execrating gluttonous desires. For “meats are for the\r\nbelly,”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_418\" id=\"FNanchor_418\">[418]</a> for on them depends this truly carnal and destructive\r\nlife; whence<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_419\" id=\"FNanchor_419\">[419]</a> some, speaking with unbridled tongue, dare to apply\r\nthe name <i>agapè</i><a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_420\" id=\"FNanchor_420\">[420]</a> to pitiful suppers, redolent of savour\r\nand sauces. Dishonouring the good and saving work of the Word, the\r\nconsecrated <i>agapè</i>, with pots and pouring of sauce; and by drink\r\nand delicacies and smoke desecrating that name, they are deceived in\r\ntheir idea, having expected that the promise of God might be bought\r\nwith suppers. Gatherings for the sake of mirth, and such entertainments\r\nas are called by ourselves, we name rightly suppers, dinners, and\r\nbanquets, after the example of the Lord. But such entertainments the\r\nLord has not called <i>agapè</i>. He says accordingly somewhere, “When\r\nthou art called to a wedding, recline not on the highest couch; but\r\nwhen thou art called, fall into the lowest place;”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_421\" id=\"FNanchor_421\">[421]</a> and elsewhere,\r\n“When thou makest a dinner or a supper;” and again, “But when thou\r\nmakest an entertainment, call the poor,”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_422\" id=\"FNanchor_422\">[422]</a> for whose sake chiefly\r\na supper ought to be made. And further, “A certain man made a<span class=\"pagenum\" id=\"Page_189\">[189]</span> great\r\nsupper, and called many.”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_423\" id=\"FNanchor_423\">[423]</a> But I perceive whence the specious\r\nappellation of suppers flowed: “from the gullets and furious love for\r\nsuppers”—according to the comic poet. For, in truth, “to many, many\r\nthings are on account of the supper.” For they have not yet learned\r\nthat God has provided for His creature (man I mean) food and drink,\r\nfor sustenance, not for pleasure; since the body derives no advantage\r\nfrom extravagance in viands. For, quite the contrary, those who use\r\nthe most frugal fare are the strongest and the healthiest, and the\r\nnoblest; as domestics are healthier and stronger than their masters,\r\nand husbandmen than the proprietors; and not only more robust, but\r\nwiser, as philosophers are wiser than rich men. For they have not\r\nburied the mind beneath food, nor deceived it with pleasures. But love\r\n(<i>agape</i>) is in truth celestial food, the banquet of reason. “It\r\nbeareth all things, endureth all things, hopeth all things. Love never\r\nfaileth.”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_424\" id=\"FNanchor_424\">[424]</a> “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of\r\nGod.”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_425\" id=\"FNanchor_425\">[425]</a> But the hardest of all cases is for charity, which faileth\r\nnot, to be cast from heaven above to the ground into the midst of\r\nsauces. And do you imagine that I am thinking of a supper that is to be\r\ndone away with? “For if,” it is said, “I bestow all my goods, and have\r\nnot love, I am nothing.”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_426\" id=\"FNanchor_426\">[426]</a> On this love alone depend the law and\r\nthe Word; and if “thou shalt love the Lord thy God and thy neighbour,”\r\nthis is the celestial festival in the heavens. But the earthly is\r\ncalled a supper, as has been shown from Scripture. For the supper is\r\nmade for love, but the supper is not love (<i>agape</i>); only a proof\r\nof mutual and reciprocal kindly feeling. “Let not, then, your good be\r\nevil spoken of; for the kingdom of God is not meat and drink,” says\r\nthe apostle, in order that the meal spoken of may not be conceived\r\nas ephemeral, “but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy\r\nGhost.”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_427\" id=\"FNanchor_427\">[427]</a> He who eats of this meal, the best of all, shall possess\r\nthe kingdom of God, fixing his regards here on the holy assembly of\r\nlove, the heavenly church. Love, then, is something pure and worthy\r\nof God,<span class=\"pagenum\" id=\"Page_190\">[190]</span> and its work is communication. “And the care of discipline\r\nis love,” as Wisdom says; “and love is the keeping of the law.”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_428\" id=\"FNanchor_428\">[428]</a>\r\nAnd these joys have an inspiration of love from the public nutriment,\r\nwhich accustoms to everlasting dainties. Love (<i>agape</i>), then,\r\nis not a supper. But let the entertainment depend on love. For it is\r\nsaid, “Let the children whom Thou hast loved, O Lord, learn that it is\r\nnot the products of fruits that nourish man; but it is Thy word which\r\npreserves those who believe on Thee.”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_429\" id=\"FNanchor_429\">[429]</a> “For the righteous shall\r\nnot live by bread.”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_430\" id=\"FNanchor_430\">[430]</a> But let our diet be light and digestible, and\r\nsuitable for keeping awake, unmixed with diverse varieties. Nor is this\r\na point which is beyond the sphere of discipline. For love is a good\r\nnurse for communication; having as its rich provision sufficiency,\r\nwhich, presiding over diet measured in due quantity, and treating the\r\nbody in a healthful way, distributes something from its resources\r\nto those near us. But the diet which exceeds sufficiency injures a\r\nman, deteriorates his spirit, and renders his body prone to disease.\r\nBesides, those dainty tastes, which trouble themselves about rich\r\ndishes, drive to practices of ill-repute, daintiness, gluttony, greed,\r\nvoracity, insatiability. Appropriate designations of such people as so\r\nindulge are flies, weasels, flatterers, gladiators, and the monstrous\r\ntribes of parasites—the one class surrendering reason, the other\r\nfriendship, and the other life, for the gratification of the belly;\r\ncrawling on their bellies, beasts in human shape after the image of\r\ntheir father, the voracious beast. People first called the abandoned\r\nἀσώτους, and so appear to me to indicate their end, understanding them\r\nas those who are (ἀσώστους) unsaved, excluding the σ. For those that\r\nare absorbed in pots, and exquisitely prepared niceties of condiments,\r\nare they not plainly abject, earth-born, leading an ephemeral kind of\r\nlife, as if they were not to live [hereafter]? Those the Holy Spirit,\r\nby Isaiah, denounces as wretched, depriving them tacitly of the name of\r\nlove (<i>agape</i>), since their feasting was not in accordance with\r\nthe word. “But they made mirth, killing calves, and sacrificing sheep,\r\nsaying, Let us eat<span class=\"pagenum\" id=\"Page_191\">[191]</span> and drink, for to-morrow we die.” And that He\r\nreckons such luxury to be sin, is shown by what He adds, “And your sin\r\nshall not be forgiven you till you die,”<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_431\" id=\"FNanchor_431\">[431]</a>—not conveying the idea\r\nthat death, which deprives of sensation, is the forgiveness of sin, but\r\nmeaning that death of salvation which is the recompense of sin. “Take\r\nno pleasure in abominable delicacies,” says Wisdom.<a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_432\" id=\"FNanchor_432\">[432]</a> At this point,\r\ntoo, we have to advert to what are called things sacrificed to idols,\r\nin order to show how we are enjoined to abstain from them. Polluted and\r\nabominable those things seem to me, to the blood of which, fly</p>","headings":["THE WRITINGS OF CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA.","THE INSTRUCTOR.","BOOK II.","CHAPTER I. ON EATING."],"marker_anchor":"FNanchor_429","paragraph_id":"pg71937-paragraph-337"}],"canonical_references":[],"date_end":null,"date_start":null,"deduplication_fingerprint":"bf8a1b3f16b76b76212d6b46b468d771b9891e8462b636ecac35998e710206b9","edition_title":"The writings of Clement of Alexandria, Vol. 1 (of 2)","edition_translators":["William Wilson"],"edition_year":1867,"explicit_reference_candidates":[],"headings":[],"id":"pg71937-Footnote_429","license_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html","public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"original-editor-translator-note","review_required":["work and recension attribution","original-work chronology","Bible reference numbering and citation kind","English edition rights and attribution"],"review_status":"needs_review","rights_evidence":"Project Gutenberg metadata: Public domain in the USA. Existing 1867 English translation; translator died 1875. Electronic transcription subject to Project Gutenberg reuse terms.","source_anchor":"Footnote_429","source_ebook":71937,"source_html":"<div class=\"footnote\">\n<p><a class=\"label pginternal\" href=\"#FNanchor_429\" id=\"Footnote_429\">[429]</a> Wisd. xvi. 17.</p>\n</div>","source_sha256":"8e5c5bc39922dbad2626ac7651c2eb2e3d94cdcbd721f781e9792143ebb1cd03","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/71937/pg71937-images.html#Footnote_429","text_sha256":"f9fb9716b086f682a4db175e19125325d51f7c5341c6e67472328683dfc45e8c","verified":false,"work_id":null}

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