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Chapter XXXVI.—The Garments Unspotted.
“But the ways in which this garment may be spotted are these: If any one withdraw from God the Father and Creator of all, receiving another teacher besides Christ, who alone is the faithful and true Prophet, and who has sent us twelve apostles to preach the word; if any one think otherwise than worthily of the substance of the Godhead, which excels all things;—these are the things which even fatally pollute the garment of baptism. But the things which pollute it in actions are these: murders, adulteries, hatreds, avarice, evil ambition. And the things which p. 143 pollute at once the soul and the body are these: to partake of the table of demons, that is, to taste things sacrificed, or blood, or a carcase which is strangled, 748 and if there be aught else which has been offered to demons. Be this therefore the first step to you of three; which step brings forth thirty commands, and the second sixty, and the third a hundred, 749 as we shall expound more fully to you at another time.”
[In Homily VII. 8 a similar injunction is given, at Sidon. The language in both places recalls Acts 15:20, 1 Cor. 10:21 But most of the chapter is peculiar to the Recognitions.—R.]
143:749Matt. xiii. 23. [Comp. Mark 4:8, 20, where the order of the numbers corresponds with that of the Recognitions. The interpretation is a fanciful one, indicating not only Judaistic legalism, but the notion of esoteric teaching. The passage shows Ebionitic tendencies.—R.]