Pay attention to yourself, and to your teaching. Continue in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.
"VII. The last mark and character of these men is: Commanding to abstain from meats, c. The same lying hypocrites who should promote the worship of demons, should not only prohibit lawful marriage, but likewise impose unnecessary abstinence from meats and these too, as indeed it is fit they should, usually go together as constituent parts of the same hypocrisy. It is as much the law of monks to abstain from meats, as from marriage. Some never eat any flesh; others only certain kinds, on certain days. Frequent fasts are the rule and boast of their orders. So lived the monks of the ancient Church; so live, with less strictness perhaps, but with greater ostentation, the monks and friars of the Church of Rome; and these have been the principal propagators and defenders of the worship of the dead, both in former and in latter times. The worship of the dead is indeed so monstrously absurd as well as impious, that there was hardly any probability of its ever prevailing in the world but by hypocrisy and lies. But that these particular sorts of hypocrisy-celibacy, under pretence of chastity; and abstinence, under pretence of devotion-should be employed for this purpose, the Spirit of God alone could foresee and foretell. There is no necessary connection between the worship of the dead, and forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats; and yet it is certain that the great advocates for this worship have, by their pretended purity and mortification, procured the greater reverence to their persons, and the readier reception to their doctrines. But this idle, popish, monkish abstinence is as unworthy of a Christian as it is unnatural to a man; it is preventing the purpose of nature, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving by believers, and them who know the truth." See Bishop Newton's Dissertations on the Prophecies; and Dr. Dodd's notes.