Do you not yet understand, that whatsoever enters in at the mouth goes into the belly, and is cast out into the drain?
Read Chapter 15
Chromatius of Aquileia
AD 407
The Pharisees, as Peter made clear, begrudgingly grasped the dictum of the Lord which says, “It is not what enters the mouth that defiles a man.” God indicated through Moses long ago that not everything about the use of food must be considered clean. He declared that certain things were clean and other things were unclean. But now we must ask why God prohibited the people long ago to eat these things. Since all things created by God to be used as human food were blessed at the very beginning and they remain no less so by their very nature, why is it that divine law later prescribed to the Jewish people certain things as lawful for eating because they were clean and certain things as unlawful because they were unclean? First, precepts of this type were given by the Lord because of the dissipation and immoderate appetite of the people. For since they were overly concerned with eating and drinking, these people began to overlook God’s precepts. They made for themselves a molten calf in Ho...
