Hugo Grotius · 84 of 132

SECT. IX. And the difference of meats.

WHAT has been said concerning the law of sacrifices, the same may be affirmed of that in which different kinds of meat are prohibited. It is manifest, that after the universal deluge, God gave to Noah and his posterity a right to use any sort of food; which right descended not only to Japhet and Ham, but also to Shem and his posterity, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But afterwards, when the people in Egypt were tinctured with the vile superstition of that nation; then it was that God first prohibited the eating some sort of living creatures; either because for the most part such were offered by the Egyptians to their gods, and they made divination by them; or because in that typical law, the particular voices of men were represented by certain kinds of living creatures. That these precepts were not universal, appears from the instance of what is appointed concerning the flesh of a beast that died of itself, Deut. xiv. that it was not lawful for the Israelites to eat it, but it was lawful for strangers, which strangers the Jews were commanded to perform all good offices to, as esteemed of God. And the ancient Hebrew teachers openly declare, that in the times of the Messiah, the law of the prohibition of meats should cease, and that swine’s flesh should be as clean as that of an ox. And certainly since God designed to gather a people to himself out of all nations, it was more reasonable that he should make liberty, and not bondage, in such things common to all. Now follows an examination of festival days.