A great counter-Principle against this ascetic tendency.
"Unto the pure all things are pure: but to the defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled."
I. THE PRIVILEGES OF THE PURE.
1. The pure are not those ceremonially pure, but those
2. Their privilege, purchased by the blood of Christ, was the lawful liberty of using all meats under the gospel which were forbidden by the ceremonial law.
3. The apostle elsewhere teaches the same truth. "For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure, but it is evil for that man that eateth with offense" (Romans 14:20). All meats are pure to the pure in heart.
4. The distinction of meats among Roman Catholics tends to the neglect of the Divine Law altogether. People on the Continent go to balls on the Lord's day who will feel their souls in danger from eating an egg on Friday.
5. The saying of the apostle has an almost proverbial east; for it asserts that "all things"—that is, more than mere food—may have a purifying tendency in the case of the pure. Nothing is unclean of itself, but good, and to be received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:3-5).
II. THE MORAL RETRIBUTION OF THE IMPURE. It is that they pollute all they touch, and everything becomes the means of increasing their depravity.
1. There is nothing impure or evil in creation; it is in the mind and heart of men; these can turn the choicest gifts of God into the means of moral defilement.
2. Unbelief is the fountain from which all the evil flows; for to the "defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure." The worshippers may, by their distinctions of food, only foster pride and self-righteousness; but all alike springs from unbelief, which disregards the authority of the Word of God.
3. The impurity is not merely external, such as many dread, but internal; for it extends to "the mind and conscience," to the whole intellectual, volitional, and moral nature of man. Thus the last safeguard of the soul disappears, as the retribution upon man's neglect of God, truth, and purity. There is no longer a taste for the simple truth of the gospel, but a frightful facility for self-deception.—T.C.