Origen, on Sir 28:25

“The death thereof is a most evil death: and hell is preferable to it.”

“We are clearly taught by the Savior that when we read in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy concerning the precepts about clean and unclean meat—the carnal Jews and the Ebionites, who differ little from them, accuse us of disobeying these precepts—we are not to think that the scope of the Scripture is to be found in any superficial material understanding of them. If, in fact, it is not what enters the mouth that renders one unclean but what comes out of the mouth, especially when the Savior in the Gospel of Mark said that "he makes all food clean," it is clear that we do not contaminate ourselves if we eat things that the Jews, wanting to be enslaved by the letter of the Law, say are impure. But it is clear that we do contaminate ourselves when, although our lips should be bound with intelligence and we ought to make for them what we call a balance and weight, we speak whatever comes to mind and talk about things that we should not discuss, which then become the source of sins.”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.