rain-water taken by itself.  But if we must have the authority of taste to prove the presence in any object of part of God, he must dwell in dates and honey more than in pork, but more in pork than in beans.  I grant that He dwells more in a fig than in a liver; but then you must allow that He is more in liver than in beet.  And, on this principle, must you not confess that some plants, which none of you can doubt to be cleaner than flesh, receive God from this very flesh, if we are to think of God as mixed with the flavor?  For both cabbages taste better when cooked along with flesh; and, while we cannot relish the plants on which cattle feed, when these are turned into milk we think them improved in color, and find them very agreeable to the taste. 41.  Or must we think that good is to be found in greater quantity where the three good qualities—a good color, and smell, and taste—are found together?  Then you must not admire and praise flowers so much, as you cannot admit them to be tried at the tribunal of the palate.  At least you must not prefer purslain to flesh, since flesh when cooked is superior in color, smell, and taste.  A young pig roasted (for your ideas on this subject force us to discuss good and evil with you as if you were cooks and confectioners, instead of men of reading or literary taste) is bright in color, and agreeable in smell, and pleasant in taste.  Here is a perfect evidence of the presence of the divine substance.  You are invited by this threefold testimony, and called on to purify this substance by your sanctity.  Make the attack.  Why do you hold back?  What objection have you to make.  In color alone the excrement of an infant surpasses lentils; in smell alone a roast morsel surpasses a soft green fig; in taste alone a kid when slaughtered surpasses the plant which it fed on when alive:  and we have found a kind of flesh in flavor of which all three give evidence.  What more do you require?  What reply will you make?  Why should eating meat make you unclean, if using such monstrosities in dis- cussion does not?  And, above all, the rays of the sun, which you surely think more of than all animal or vegetable food, have no smell or taste, and are remarkable among other sub- stances only by their eminently bright color; which is a loud call to you, and an obligation, in spite of yourselves, to place nothing higher than a bright color among the evidences of an admixture of good. 81 42.  Thus you are forced into this difficulty, that you must acknowledge the part of God as dwelling more in blood, and in the filthy but bright-colored animal refuse which is thrown out in the streets, than in the pale leaves of the olive.  If you reply, as you actually do, that olive leaves when burnt give out a flame, which proves the presence of light, while flesh when burnt does not, what will you say of oil, which lights nearly all the lamps in Italy?  What of cow dung (which surely is more unclean than the flesh), which peasants use when dry as fuel, so that the fire is always at hand, and the liberation of the smoke is always going on?  And if brightness and lustre prove a greater presence of the divine part, why do you yourselves not purify it, why not appropriate it, why not liberate it?  For it is found chiefly in flowers, not to speak of blood and countless things almost the same as blood in flesh or 139 Disclosure of the Monstrous Tenets of the Manichæans.