1 Timothy 4:3
fForbidding to marry, gand commanding to abstain from *meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
κωλυόντων γαμεῖν, ἀπέχεσθαι βρωμάτων, ἃ ὁ Θεὸς ἔκτισεν εἰς μετάληψιν μετὰ εὐχαριστίας τοῖς πιστοῖς καὶ ἐπεγνωκόσι τὴν ἀλήθειαν.
Textual key: no entry
f:
Hebrews 13:4 Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
1 Corinthians 7:28 But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh: but I spare you.
1 Corinthians 7:39 The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord.
g:
Genesis 1:29 ¶And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
Genesis 1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
Genesis 9:3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.
1 Corinthians 10:30 For if I by grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that for which I give thanks?
Romans 14:6 He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.
*:
meats-food of any kind.
the Greek is, hindering to marry, but that might be by forbidding it by a law under a severe penalty. There are great disputes whom the apostle speaketh of, to find out which it is considerable:
1. That the apostle speaketh of a time that was then to come;
2. Of some who had it in their power to hinder it:
which will make the prophecy hardly applicable to any but the Romish synagogue, to be sure, not so applicable; for though there were some persons before them that condemned marriages, yet as they were but a small, inconsiderable party, so they were persons that had no power to hinder marriage by any penal laws, nor any that did it in such hypocrisy under a pretence of piety, when he who runs may read that they do it to maintain the grandeur of their ecclesiastical hierarchy. How applicable therefore soever this might be to the Ebionites, and those that followed Saturninus and Marcion, and the Encratitae, (which the papists contend for), it certainly more nearly concerns the papists themselves, who more universally forbade them to their clergy, and were the first that had a power to hinder them, and fell into much later times than any of the others.
to abstain from some meats; and this also they should teach in hypocrisy, i.e. under a pretence of piety. This every whit as well agrees to the Romish synagogue as the other, whose prohibitions of flesh are sufficiently known. Mr. Mede is very confident that the Holy Ghost doth here describe the popish monks, and those that gave rules to those orders.
which meats, as well as other, God hath created for the use of man, giving him a liberty to kill and eat, only we ought to receive them with thanksgiving; which confirmeth our religious custom both of begging a blessing upon our meat before we eat, and returning thanks to God when we have eaten, for which also we have our Saviour’s example, Mat 14:19 15:36.
not that such as believe not and are ignorant of the truth may not eat, but they have not so good and comfortable a right to the creatures as believers, Tit 1:15; and they know and understand their liberty to eat of those things, which others deprive themselves of by their superstitious opinions and constitutions.