  THE attitude of the first great Christian writers and apologists in regard to total abstinence was somewhat peculiar. Trained in the school of Plato, in the later development of neo-platonism, their strongest convictions and their personal sympathies were, naturally, anti-kreophagistic. The traditions, too, of the earliest period in the history of Christianity coincided with their pre-Christian convictions, since the immediate and accredited representatives of the Founder of the new religion, who presided over the first Christian society, were commonly held to have been, equally with their predecessors and contemporaries the Essenes, strict abstinents from flesh-eating. Moreover, the very numerous party in the Church—the most diametrically opposed in other respects to the Jewish or Ebionite Christians—the Gnostics or philosophical Christians, “the most polite, the most learned, and the most wealthy of the Christian name,” for the most part agreed with their rivals for orthodox supremacy in aversion from flesh, and, as it seems, for nearly the same reason—a belief in the essential and inherent evil of matter, a persuasion, it may be said, however unscientific, not unnatural, perhaps, in any age, and certainly not surprising in an age especially characterised by the grossest materialism, On the one hand Christianity, in its later and more developed form, had insensibly cast off the rigid formalism and exclusiveness of Mosaism, and, on the other, had stamped with the brand of heresy the Greek infusion of philosophy and liberalism. Unfortunately, unable clearly to distinguish between the true and the false—between the accidental and fanciful and the permanent and real—timidly cautious of approving anything which seemed connected with heresy—the leaders of the dominant body were prone to seek refuge in a middle course, in regard to the question of flesh-eating, scarcely consistent with strict logic or strict reason. While advocating abstinence as the highest spiritual exercise or aspiration, they seem to have been unduly anxious to disclaim any motives other than ascetic—to disclaim, in fine, humanitarian or “secular” reason, such as that of the Pythagoreans. Such was the feeling, apparently, of the later orthodox church, at least in the West. While, however, we thus find, occasionally, a certain constraint and even contradiction in the theory of the first great teachers of the Church, the practice was much more consistent. That, in fact, during the first three or four centuries the most esteemed of the Christian heroes and saints were not only non-flesh-eaters but Vegetarians of the extremest kind (far surpassing, if we give any credit to the accounts we have of them, the most frugal of modern abstainers) is well known to everyone at all acquainted with ecclesiastical and, especially, eremitical history—and it is unnecessary to further insist upon a notorious fact. Titus Flavius Clemens, the founder of the famous Alexandrian school of Christian theology, and at once the most learned and most philosophic of all the Christian Fathers, is generally supposed to have been a native of Athens. His Latin name suggests some connexion with the family of Clemens, cousin of the emperor Domitian, who is said to have been put to death for the crime of atheism, as the new religion was commonly termed by the orthodox pagans. He travelled and studied the various philosophies in the East and West. On accepting the Christian faith he sought information in the schools of its most reputed teachers, of whom the name of PantÆnus is the only one known to us. At the death of PantÆnus, in 190, Clement succeeded to the chair of theology in Alexandria, and at the same time, perhaps, he became a presbyter. He continued to lecture with great reputation till the year 202, when the persecution under Severus forced him to retire from the Egyptian capital. He then took refuge in Palestine, and appears not to have returned to Alexandria. The time and manner of his death are alike unknown. He is supposed to have died in the year 220. Amongst his pupils by far the most famous, hardly second to himself in learning and ability, was Origen, his successor in the Alexandrian professorship. His three great works are: A Hortatory Discourse Addressed to the Greeks (????? ???t?ept???? p??? ?????a?), The Instructor (Paidagogos—strictly, Tutor, or Conductor to school), and the Miscellanies (Stromateis, or Stromata—lit. “Patch-work”). He assumes the name and character of a Gnostic, It is in his second treatise, the Instructor or Tutor, that Clement displays his opinions on the subject of flesh-eating:— “Some men live that they may eat, as the irrational beings ‘whose life is their belly and nothing else.’ But the Instructor enjoins us to eat that we may live. For neither is food our business, nor is pleasure our aim. Therefore discrimination is to be used in reference to food: it must be plain, truly simple, suiting precisely simple and artless children—as ministering to life not to luxury. And the life to which it conduces consists of two things, health and strength: to which plainness of fare is most suitable, being conducive both to digestion and lightness of body, from which come growth, and health, and right strength: not strength that is violent or dangerous, and wretched, as is that of the athletes which is produced by artificial feeding.” Referring to the injunction of Jesus, “When thou makest an entertainment, call the poor,” for “whose sake chiefly a supper ought to be made,” Clement says of the rich:— “They have not yet learned that God has provided for his creature (man, I mean) food and drink for sustenance not for pleasure: since the body derives no advantage from extravagance in viands. On the contrary, those who use the most frugal fare are the strongest and the healthiest, and the noblest: as domestics are healthier and stronger than their masters, and agricultural labourers than proprietors, and not only more vigorous but wiser than rich men. For they have not buried the mind beneath food. Wholly unnatural and inhuman is it for those who are of the earth, fattening, themselves like cattle, to feed themselves up for death. We must guard against those sorts of food which persuade us to eat when we are not hungry, bewitching the appetite. For is there not, within a temperate simplicity, a wholesome variety of eatables—vegetables, roots, olives, herbs, milk, cheese, fruits, and all kinds of dry food? ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ said the Lord to the disciples after the resurrection: and they, as taught by Him to practice frugality, ‘gave him a piece of broiled fish,’ and besides this, it is not to be overlooked that those who feed according to the Word are not debarred from dainties—such as honey combs. For of sorts of food those are the most proper which are fit for immediate use without fire, since they are readiest: and second to these are those which are the simplest, as we said before. But those who bend around inflammatory tables, nourishing their own diseases, are ruled by a most licentious disease which I shall venture to call the demon of the belly: and the worst and most vile of demons. It is far better to be happy than to have a devil dwelling in us: and happiness is found only in the practice of virtue. Accordingly the Apostle Matthew lived upon seeds and nuts, (????d??a—hard-shelled fruits) and vegetables without the use of flesh. And John, who carried temperance to the extreme, ‘ate locusts and wild honey.’” As to the Jewish laws: “The Jews,” says Clement, “had frugality enjoined on them by the Law in the most systematic manner. For the Instructor, by Moses, deprived them of the use of innumerable things, adding reasons—the spiritual ones hidden, the carnal ones apparent—to which latter, indeed, they have trusted”:— “So that, altogether, but a few [animals] were left proper for their food. And of those which he permitted them to touch, he prohibited such as had died, or were offered to idols, or had been strangled: inasmuch as to touch these was unlawful.... Pleasure has often produced in men harm and pain, and full feeding begets in the soul uneasiness, and forgetfulness, and foolishness. It is said, moreover, that the bodies of children, when shooting up to their height, are made to grow right by abstinence in diet; for then the spirit which pervades the body, in order to its growth, is not checked by abundance of food obstructing the freedom of its course. Whence that truth-seeking philosopher, Plato, fanning the spark of the Hebrew philosophy, when condemning a life of luxury, says: ‘On my coming hither [to Syracuse] the life which is here called happy pleased me not by any means. For not one man under heaven, if brought up from his youth in such practices, will ever turn out a wise man, with however admirable genius he may be endowed.’ For Plato was not unacquainted with David, In treating of the subject of sacrifices, upon which he uses a good deal of sarcasm (in regard to the pagan sacrifices at least), Clement incidentally allows us to see, still further, his opinion respecting gross feeding. He quotes several of the Greek poets who ridicule the practice and pretence of sacrificial propitiation, e.g., Menander:— “the end of the loin, The gall, the bones uneatable, they give Alone to Heaven: the rest themselves consume.” “If, in fact,” remarks Clement, “the savour is the special desire of the Gods of the Greeks, should they not first deify the cooks, and worship the Chimney itself which is still closer to the much-prized savour?” “If,” he justly adds, “the deity need nothing, what need has he of food? Now, if nourishing matters taken in by the nostrils are diviner than those taken in by the mouth, yet they imply respiration. What then do they say of God? Does He exhale, like the oaks, or does he only inhale, like the aquatic animals by the dilatation of the gills, or does he breathe all around like the insects?” The only innocent altar he asserts to be the one allowed by Pythagoras:— “The very ancient altar in Delos was celebrated for its purity, to which alone, as being undefiled by slaughter and death, they say that Pythagoras would permit approach. And will they not believe us when we say that the righteous soul is the truly sacred altar? But I believe that sacrifices were invented by men to be a pretext for eating flesh, and yet, without such idolatry, they might have partaken of it.” He next glances at the popular reason for the Pythagorean abstinence, and declares:— “If any righteous man does not burden his soul by the eating of flesh, he has the advantage of a rational motive, not, as Pythagoras and his followers dream, of the transmigration of the soul. Now Xenokrates, treating of ‘Food derived from Animals,’ ‘For of the quadrupeds we should not slay In future aught but swine. For they have flesh Most delicate: and about the swine is nought For us: excepting bristles, dirt, and noise.’ Some eat them as being useless, others as destructive of fruits, and others do not eat them because they are said to have strong propensity to coition. It is alleged that the greatest amount of fatty substance is produced by swine’s flesh: it may, then, be appropriate for those whose ambition is for the body; it is not so for those who cultivate the soul, by reason of the dulling of the faculties resulting from eating of flesh. The Gnostic, perhaps, too, will abstain for the sake of training, and that the body may not grow wanton in amorousness. ‘For wine,’ says Andokides, ‘and gluttonous feeds of flesh make the body strong, but the soul more sluggish.’ Accordingly such food, in order to a clear understanding, is to be rejected.” In a chapter in his Miscellanies, discussing the comparative merits of the Pagan and of the Jewish code of ethics, he displays much eloquence in attempting to prove the superiority of the latter. In the course of his argument he is led to make some acknowledgment of the claims of the lower animals which, however incomplete, is remarkable as being almost unique in Christian theology. He quotes certain of the “Proverbs,” e.g., ‘The merciful man is long-suffering, and in every one who shows solicitude there is wisdom,’ and proceeds (assuming the indebtedness of the Greeks to the Jews):— “Pythagoras seems to me to have derived his mildness towards irrational animals from the Law. For instance, he interdicted the employment of the young of sheep and goats and cows for some time after their birth; not even on the pretext of sacrifice allowing it, on account both of the young ones and of the mother; training men to gentleness by their conduct towards those beneath them. ‘Resign,’ he says, ‘the young one to the mother for the proper time.’ For if nothing takes place without a cause, and milk is produced in large quantity in parturition for the sustenance of the progeny, he who tears away the young one from the supply of the milk and the breast of the mother, dishonours Nature.” Reverting to the Jewish religion, he asserts:— “The Law, too, expressly prohibits the slaying of such animals as are pregnant till they have brought forth, remotely restraining the proneness of men to do wrong to |
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