“I greatly mistake (_mentior_) if God himself, upbraiding the forgetfulness of himself by Israel, does not attribute it to fulness of stomach. In fine, in the book of Deuteronomy, bidding them to be on their guard against the same cause, he says, ‘Lest when thou hast eaten and art full--when thy flocks and thy herds multiply,’ &c. He makes the enormity of gluttony an evil superior to any other corrupting result of riches.... So great is the privilege (prerogative) of a circumscribed diet that it makes God a dweller with men (_contubernalem_--literally, ‘a fellow-guest’), and, indeed, to live (as it were) on equal terms with them. For if the eternal God--as he testifies through Isaiah--feels no hunger, man, too, may become equal to the Deity when he subsists without gross nourishment.” He instances Daniel and his countrymen, “who preferred vegetable food and water to the royal dishes and goblets, and so became more comely than the rest, in order that no one might fear for his personal appearance; while, at the same time, they were still more improved in understanding.” As to the priesthood:-- “God said to Aaron, ‘Wine and strong liquor shall ye not drink, you and your sons after you,’ &c. So, also, he upbraids Israel: ‘And ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink.’ (Amos ii., 3.) Now this prohibition of drink is essentially connected with the vegetable diet. Thus, where abstinence from wine is required by God, or is vowed by man, there, too, may be understood suppression of gross feeding, _for as is the eating, so is the drinking_ (_qualis enim esus, talis et potus_). It is not consistent with truth that a man should sacrifice _half_ of his stomach (_gulam_) only to God--that he should be sober in drinking, but intemperate in eating.[58] “You reply, finally, that this [abstinence] is to be observed according to the will of each individual, not by imperious obligation. But what sort of thing is this, that you should allow to your arbitrary inclinations what you will not allow to the will of God? Shall more licence be conceded to the human inclinations than to the divine power? I, for my part, hold that, free from obligation to follow the fashions of the world, I am not free from obligation to God.” In regard to St. Paul’s well-known sentences (_Rom._ xiv., 1, &c.), Tertullian maintains that he refers to certain teachers of abstinence who acted from pride, not from a sense of right:--