of the user, that is sinful." Now both these lives are
lawful and praiseworthy--namely, that a man withdraw from the society
of other men and observe abstinence; and that he associate with other
men and live like them. And therefore our Lord wished to give men an
example of either kind of life.

As to John, according to Chrysostom (Hom. xxxvii super Matth.), "he
exhibited no more than his life and righteous conduct . . . but
Christ had the testimony also of miracles. Leaving, therefore, John
to be illustrious by his fasting, He Himself came the opposite way,
both coming unto publicans' tables and eating and drinking."

Reply Obj. 2: Just as by abstinence other men acquire the power of
self-restraint, so also Christ, in Himself and in those that are His,
subdued the flesh by the power of His Godhead. Wherefore, as we read
Matt. 9:14, the Pharisees and the disciples of John fasted, but not
the disciples of Christ. On which Bede comments, saying that "John
drank neither wine nor strong drink: because abstinence is
meritorious where the nature is weak. But why should our Lord, whose
right by nature it is to forgive sins, avoid those whom He could make
holier than such as abstain?"

Reply Obj. 3: As Chrysostom says (Hom. xiii super Matth.), "that thou
mightest learn how great a good is fasting, and how it is a shield
against the devil, and that after baptism thou shouldst give thyself
up, not to luxury, but to fasting--for this cause did He fast, not as
needing it Himself, but as teaching us . . . And for this did He
proceed no further than Moses and Elias, lest His assumption of our
flesh might seem incredible." The mystical meaning, as Gregory says
(Hom. xvi in Evang.), is that by Christ's example the number "forty"
is observed in His fast, because the power of the "decalogue is
fulfilled throughout the four books of the Holy Gospel: since ten
multiplied by four amounts to forty." Or, because "we live in this
mortal body composed of the four elements, and by its lusts we
transgress the commandments of the Lord, which are expressed in the
decalogue." Or, according to Augustine (QQ. lxxxiii, qu. 81): "To
know the Creator and the creature is the entire teaching of wisdom.
The Creator is the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Now the creature is partly invisible, as the soul, to which the
number three may be ascribed, for we are commanded to love God in
three ways, 'with our whole heart, our whole soul, and o