On the Jewish Meats. ———————————— Chapter I. Argument.—Novatian, a Roman Presbyter, During His Retirement at the Time of the Decian Persecution, Being Urged by Various Letters from His Brethren, Had Written Two Earlier Epistles Against the Jews on the Subjects of Circumcision and the Sabbath, and Now Writes the Present One on the Jewish Meats. Although, most holy brethren, the day in which I receive your letters and writings is most ardently longed for by me, and to be reckoned among the chief and happiest—for what else is there now to make me more joyous?—still I think that the day is to be deemed not less notable, and among special days, wherein I return to you similar communications, with the affection of love that I owe you, and write you letters with a corresponding interest. For nothing, most holy brethren, holds me bound with such bonds, nothing stirs and arouses me with such a stimulus of care and anxiety, as the fear lest you should think that any disadvantage is suffered by you by reason of my absence; and this I strive to remedy, in labouring to show myself present with you by frequent letters. Although, therefore, the duty which I owe, and the charge I have undertaken, and the very ministerial office imposed upon me, require of me this necessity of writing letters, yet you still further enhance it, by stirring me up to write through means of your continual communications. And inclined although I am to those periodical expressions of love, you urge me the more by showing that you stand fast continually in the Gospel: whence it results, that by my letters I am not so much instructing you who are already informed, as inciting you who are already prepared. For you, who not only hold the Gospel pure and purged from all stain of perverse doctrine, but also energetically teach the same, seek not man for a master, since you show yourselves by these very things to be teachers. Therefore as you run, I exhort you; and as you watch, I stir you up; and as you contend against “the spiritual things of wickedness,” I address you; and as you press “in your course to the prize of your calling in Christ,” I urge you on,—that, treading under foot and rejecting as well the sacrilegious calumnies of heretics as also the idle fables of Jews, you may hold the sole word and teaching of Christ, so as worthily to claim for yourselves the authority of His name. But how perverse are the Jews, and remote from the understanding of their law, I have fully shown, as I believe, in two former letters, wherein it was absolutely proved that they are ignorant of what is the true circumcision, and what the true Sabbath; and their ever increasing blindness is confuted in this present epistle, wherein I have briefly discoursed concerning their meats, because that in them they consider that they only are holy, and that all others are defiled.
Chapter II. Argument.—He First of All Asserts that the Law is Spiritual; And Thence, Man’s First Food Was Only the Fruit Trees, and the Use of Flesh Was Added, that the Law that Followed Subsequently Was to Be Understood Spiritually. Therefore, first of all, we must avail ourselves of that passage, “that the law is spiritual;” and if they deny it to be spiritual, they assuredly blaspheme; if, avoiding blasphemy, they confess it to be spiritual, let them read it spiritually. For divine things must be divinely received, and must assuredly be maintained as holy. But a grave fault is branded on those who attach earthly and human doctrine to sacred and spiritual words; and this we must beware of doing. Moreover, we may beware, if any things enjoined by God be so treated as if they were assumed to diminish His authority, lest, in calling some things impure and unclean, their institution should dishonour their ordainer. For in reprobating what He has made, He will appear to have condemned His own works, which He had approved as good; and He will be designated as seeming capricious in both cases, as the heretics indeed would have it; either in having blessed things which were not clean, or in subsequently reprobating as not good, creatures which He had blessed as both clean and good. And of this the enormity and contradiction will remain for ever if that Jewish doctrine is persisted in, which must be got rid of with all our ability; so that whatever is irregularly delivered by them, may be taken away by us, and a suitable arrangement of His works, and an appropriate and spiritual application of the divine law, may be restored. But to begin from the beginning of things, whence it behoves me to begin; the only food for the first men was fruit and the produce of the trees. For afterwards, man’s sin transferred his need from the fruit-trees to the produce of the earth, when the very attitude of his body attested the condition of his conscience. For although innocency raised men up towards the heavens to pluck their food from the trees so long as they had a good conscience, yet sin, when committed, bent men down to the earth and to the ground to gather its grain. Moreover, afterwards the use of flesh was added, the divine favour supplying for human necessities the kinds of meats generally fitting for suitable occasions. For while a more tender meat was needed to nourish men who were both tender and unskilled, it was still a food not prepared without toil, doubtless for their advantage, lest they should again find a pleasure in sinning, if the labour imposed upon sin did not exhort innocence. And since now it was no more a paradise to be tended, but a whole world to be cultivated, the more robust food of flesh is offered to men, that for the advantage of culture something more might be added to the vigour of the human body. All these things, as I have said, were by grace and by divine arrangement: so that either the most vigorous food should not be given in too small quantity for men’s support, and they should be enfeebled for labour; or that the more tender meat should not be too abundant, so that, oppressed beyond the measure of their strength, they should not be able to bear it. But the law which followed subsequently ordained the flesh foods with distinction: for some animals it gave and granted for use, as being clean; some it interdicted as not clean, and conveying pollution to those that eat them. Moreover, it gave this character to those that were clean, that those which chew the cud and divide the hoofs are clean; those are unclean which do neither one nor other of these things. So, in fishes also, the law said that those indeed were clean which were covered with scales and supplied with fins, but that those which were otherwise were not clean. Moreover, it established a distinction among the fowls, and laid down what was to be judged either an abomination, or clean. Thus the law ordained the exercise of very great subtlety in making a separation among those animals which the ancient appointment had gathered together into one form of blessing. What, then, are we to say? Are the animals therefore unclean? But what else is it to say that they are not clean, than that the law has separated them from the uses of food? And what, moreover, is that that we have just now said? Then God is the ordainer of things which are not clean; and the blame attached to things which are made will recoil upon their Maker, who did not produce them clean; to say which is certainly characteristic of extreme and excessive folly: it is to accuse God as having created unclean things, and to charge upon the divine majesty the guilt of having made things which are abomination, especially when they were both pronounced “very good,” and as being good have obtained the blessing from God Himself “that they should increase and multiply.” Moreover also they were reserved by the command of the Creator in Noah’s ark for the sake of their offspring, that so being kept they might be proved to be needful; and being needful, they might be proved to be good, although even in that case also there is a distinction appended. But still, even then, the creation of those very creatures that were not clean might have been utterly abolished, if it had needed to be abolished on account of its own pollution.