The Instructor 2.1.14

(… example of simple food.) And that fish which Peter caught at the Lord's command also hints at easy, God-given, and temperate food. He advises us to take away from those who come up out of the water to the bait of righteousness their profligacy and love of money, like the coin from the fish, so as to separate them from vainglory; and, giving the stater to the tax collectors, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's, to keep for God what is God's. The stater could have other interpretations, not unknown to us, but the present is not the right time to work them out. It is enough to recall it, using for our purpose flowers of the Word that are in tune with it, as we have often done already, drawing the most useful spring to the urgent point of the inquiry, to water what the Word has planted. For even if “I am permitted to partake of all things, not all things are profitable”; for those who do everything that is permitted quickly fall into doing what is not permitted. As justice does not come from greed, nor self-control from licentiousness, so the Christian's way of life is not acquired by luxury; for the table of truth is far from “lewd dishes.” For even if all things were made above all for the sake of human beings, it is not good to use all things, nor always. The occasion, the time, the manner, and the purpose give no small weight toward what is profitable for one being instructed; and what is fitting has power to do away with the life devoted to the belly, which wealth tends to call forth: not a wealth that sees sharply, but an abundance blind about gluttony. No one is poor in necessities, nor is a human being ever overlooked; for there is one who nourishes the birds and the fish and, in a word, the irrational animals: God; and they lack nothing at all, though they take no thought for food. And we are better than they, as their masters, and nearer to God, as more self-controlled. We were not made to eat and drink, but to exist, having been made for the knowledge of God. “For the righteous man,” it says, “eats and satisfies his soul, but the bellies of the ungodly are in want,” craving unceasing daintiness.