The sons of Aaron also, who set upon the altar a strange fire not commanded by the Lord, were at once blotted out in the sight of the avenging Lord. These examples, you will see, are being followed wherever the tradition which comes from God is despised by lovers of strange doctrine and replaced by teaching of merely human authority.

The same penalty awaits those who bring strange water to a false baptism. The censure and vengeance of God overtakes heretics who do, against the church, what only the church is allowed to do.

This is not far from being a sign of our unhappy time, in which some who have attained positions as priests and teachers—merely to mention it is both distressing and sad enough—are consumed by the fire of heavenly vengeance because they prefer the fire of cupidity to the fire of heavenly love. Their eternal damnation was prefigured by the temporal death of Aaron’s sons.

Priests given to wine are both condemned by the apostle^[1] and forbidden by the old law. Those who serve the altar, we are told, must drink neither wine nor shechar.^[2] Now every intoxicating drink is in Hebrew called shechar, whether it is made of corn or of the juice of apples, whether you distil from the honeycomb a rude kind of mead or make a liquor by squeezing dates or strain a thick syrup from a decoction of corn. Whatever intoxicates and disturbs the balance of the mind avoid as you would wine.

With whom then should we live? With the just, he replies, again under a metaphor. Everything of split hoof and chewing the cud is clean, because the split hoof obviously is a sign of evenly balanced justice, which chews the cud of its own food of justice, the word, which enters from without through instruction. And, once within, [it] is recalled as if from the stomach of the mind for the musings of reason. The just man chews the cud of spiritual nourishment, because he holds the Word in his mouth. Justice undoubtedly divides the hoof, in that it both sanctifies in this life and prepares us as well for the life to come.

[In Songs], the bride desires to sit down in the shadow of this apple tree. This prefigures either the church, as we said, under the protection of the Son of God, or else the soul fleeing all other teachings and cleaving to the Word of God alone. She chews the Word, whose fruit, moreover, she finds sweet in her throat by continual meditation on the law of God, chewing as if it were like the cud of a clean animal.

Hence it is properly decreed in the law that the only animals which are clean and suitable to be eaten by the people of God are those that have horns. For it is well known that those animals that chew the cud and divide the hoof are also those that have horns. So . . . it is mystically disclosed that the only people who can be incorporated into a spiritual union with the church of God are those who by the strength of their faith prove that they are unconquered in their battles with the vices.

Fish with rough scales are considered clean, just as persons with austere, rough, unpolished, steadfast and grave traits are commended. Fish without scales are considered unclean, just as loose, fickle, insincere and effeminate traits are censured. What does the law mean when it states, You shall not eat the camel?^[1] From the example of an animal, it censures an unruly life and one distorted by unpleasantness. What does the law mean when it forbids one to partake of the flesh of swine?^[2] It condemns, you can be sure, a foul and filthy life—one that delights in sordid vices by placing its supreme good not in nobility of spirit but in the flesh alone. What does the law want to indicate when it forbids the hare?^[3] It denounces nervous, effeminate men. Who would use as food the flesh of the weasel?^[4] In it the law condemns theft.

Who would dare partake of the skink?^[5] The law abhors a capricious and fickle life. Who would eat the newt?^[6] The law detests aberrations of the mind. Who would dare partake of the hawk, the kite^[7] or the eagle? The law hates marauders and those who live by violence. Who does not loathe the vulture? The law execrates those who look for booty in someone else’s death. Who would eat the crow? The law detests immoral and shady intentions. When the law prohibits ostrich, it disapproves of intemperance. When it condemns the nightjar,^[8] it hates those who shun the light of truth. When it bans the swan, it loathes stiff-necked pride. When it excludes the heron, it dislikes a garrulous and undisciplined tongue. When it detests the bat, it condemns those who seek out the darkness of error that is like night. The law execrates these and similar characteristics in animals. Since the animals, however, are born with such characteristics, they are without reproach. Conversely such qualities are reprehensible in humanity, which was not created with them but learns from them by comparison with contrary nature, through the exercise of their own error.

The all-wise Educator, by the lips of Moses, compared association with corrupt men to living with swine when he forbade the ancient people to partake of swine. He made it plain in those words that they who invoke God should not seek the company of the unclean who, like swine, revel in bodily pleasures and filthy habits of life and impure delights, itching for evil-minded pleasures of sex.

Believing people are forbidden to use fish without its fins for food. Fish with fins and scales even leap up above the water. What do the fish with fins represent if not chosen souls? They alone pass over into the body of the heavenly church.

He adds too that they are not to eat kite or mastophage^[1] or eagle, meaning You shall not go near those who make their livelihood by plundering others. He says other similar things under some sort of allegory.

It is then proper that the barbarian^[1] philosophy, on which it is our business to speak, should prophesy also obscurely and by symbols, as was evinced. Such are the injunctions of Moses: These common things, the sow, the hawk, the eagle and the raven, are not to be eaten.^[2] For the sow is the emblem of voluptuous and unclean lust of food and lecherous and filthy licentiousness in venery, always prurient, and material, and lying in the mire and fattening for slaughter and destruction.

Be holy, says the Lord, for I am holy. The apostles boasted that they had left all things and had followed the Savior.^[1] We do not read that they left anything except their ship and their nets; yet they were crowned with the approval of him who was to be their judge. Why? Because in offering up themselves they had indeed left all that they had.

He himself says, Be holy, for I am holy, that is to say, choose me and keep away from what displeases me. Do what I love; love what I do. If what I order seems difficult, come back to me who ordered it, so that from where the command was given help might be offered. I who furnished the desire will not refuse support. Fast from contradiction, abstain from opposition. Let me be your food and drink. None desire in vain what is mine, for those who stretch out toward me seek me because I first sought them.

Pious souls of the Lord, what the Lord admonishes us is not to be considered merely in passing, for he says, Be holy because I am holy. Although this term properly belongs to all the Christian people, according to what blessed Peter says, You, however, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,^[1] this term seems particularly to apply to all priests in a special way. In all the letters which are addressed to the Lord’s priests by any men whatsoever, it is specially indicated that they are holy. Since then this term is applied to us, we ought to inquire what precisely is its meaning. It is only through Greek that the interpretation of this word holy can be discovered. For agios is the Greek for holy, and agios has the meaning not of the earth.^[2] Therefore if we are more solicitous for heavenly things than for those of earth, this term is not unfittingly applied to us.