Judging over food and brothers

It is no longer a matter of indifference whether one disturbs such a person or not, but one must strive so that one, being forced to eat apart from believing, might mingle the soul, seeing the food as evil while offering it as good. One is standing apart in the faith of Christ, believing that all flesh is sanctified and is nothing idolatrous, as the apostle himself shows in his letter to the Corinthians; another, because of having little faith, still avoids the eating of meat so as not to encounter anything offered to an idol. Let both praise the dispute concerning this matter among themselves, the one guarding against the other forcing him against what seems right to him.

And let neither the one eating more courageously than the one in faith, regarding the weak one in eating as having little faith, despise him; nor let the one guarding against it as unclean judge the one who is indifferent regarding its uncleanness. He began, therefore, from the word toward the strong, regarding the quarrel over foods as a matter of indifference, to return to the weaker ones, but having set before the others the same thing, advising them to send forth a contention over abstaining; for the word became more harmonious and more peaceful toward both by repudiating thus.

Concerning the aforementioned things, he forbids judging one another, which no one can in any way divide from God, as he says, 'Why do you look at the mote in your brother's eye?' Matt 7:3, having said beforehand: 'Do not judge, so that you may not be judged' Matt 7:1. For to condemn those who do the greatest things because of small defects which resemble motes and annoy the eye, makes them guilty of the judgment which they themselves bring upon others. Immediately, therefore, their own act of rising up against brothers brings a much greater charge than what they propose, as if an opinion were being compared to a mote.

And that small things are and are not great things that harm, such judgments which the Savior and the apostle forbade, is made clear also from the very name; for we have been called brothers, whom we are forbidden to judge, if they are even our brothers and God's children. But the failings of the children are small and not yet sins, since the one born of God does not sin according to John [1 John], so that the one sinning is not from God nor our brother, even if he is named such. If a brother is named, he says, a fornicator or an idolater or a covetous man or a thief or a drunkard or a robber, do not even eat with such a person. Let us judge, therefore, such a person as not a brother even if he is among us according to the flesh; let us separate him, since he has been separated by the spirit. For what is it to me, he says, to judge those outside? Do you not judge those inside? But God judges those outside. And you cast out the...