A Golden Chain

yea but it could not have ceased universally, if it had bound conscience, specially considering it was propounded to the Church without any mention or limitation of time. Thirdly Paul was present in this counsel: and knew the intent of the law very well, and therefore no doubt he did not in any of his Epistles gain-say the fame. This being granted, it cannot be, that this law should bind conscience out of the case of offence.¹ For he teacheth Corinthians that things offered to idols may be eaten, so be it the weak brother be not offended. Here it is answered, that when Paul writ his first Epistle to the Corinthians, this commandment of the Apostles touching things strangled & blood was not come unto them. Well, to grant all this, which can not be proved, let it be answered, why Paul did not now deliver it, and why he delivereth a doctrine contrary to that which he had decreed at Jerusalem, which was that the Gentiles should absolutely abstain from things offered to idols. As for the testimony of the fathers they are abused.² Indeed Tertullian saith plainly, that Christians in his days abstained from eating of blood, and he persuades men to continue in so doing, because he is of opinion (being indeed far deceived) that this very law of the Apostles must last to the end of the world: which conceit if the Papists hold not, what mean they to build upon him. Origen §1saith, that this law was very necessary in his daiest and no marvel. For by Idolithytes he understands, not things that have been offered to idols, and are §2afterward brought to private houses or to the market as other common meats; but he understands things that remain consecrated to idols, and are no where else used but in their temples, which we grant with him must for ever be avoided as means and instruments of Idolatry. Whereas the law of the Apostles speaks only of the first kind. As for things strangled and blood, he takes them to be the devils food: and for this cause he approves abstinence from them. And whereas Augustine saith,³ that it is a good thing to abstain from things offered to idols, though it be in necessity; he must be understood of the first kind of Idolithytes which are yet remaining in the idol-temples still consecrated unto them, and not of the second, of which the Apostles law (as I have said) must be understood.