1002. 'Not eating' means not mixing together. This follows from what has been said above. Regarded in itself eating animal flesh is something profane, for in most ancient times people never ate the flesh of any beast or bird, but only different kinds of grain, especially wheaten bread, also the fruit of trees, vegetables, milk, and milk products such as butter. Slaughtering living creatures and eating their flesh was to them abominable, akin to the behaviour of wild animals. Service and use alone was demanded of those creatures, as is clear from Genesis 1:29-30. But in the process of time when mankind began to be as savage as wild animals, indeed more savage, they first began to slaughter living creatures and eat their flesh. And because man had become such, he was permitted to do so and is still permitted today. And insofar as he does so from conscience, it is quite legitimate, for his conscience is given form from all those things he presumes to be true and so legitimate. Consequently nobody nowadays stands in any sense condemned because he eats meat.

2051. That 'he must be circumcised' ¹ means that they, namely those inside the Church meant by him 'born in the house' and him 'bought with silver', must completely remove from themselves self-love and love of the world is clear from the representation of 'circumcision' as purification from self-love and love of the world, dealt with above in 2039. Here the requirement for them to be circumcised is repeated in the command 'he must be circumcised ¹ ' which expresses the necessity for them to be purified completely from those loves. And because it means those who are inside the Church no reference is made here to sons who are foreigners, for the latter, as shown above in 2049, mean those outside the Church.

[2] From this repetition of what has been stated in the previous verse concerning those 'born in the house' and those 'bought with silver', anyone may see that there is a Divine arcanum that is not evident from the sense of the letter. The arcanum is that purification from those foul loves is absolutely vital inside the Church, for the reason also that people inside the Church are capable of rendering sacred things unclean, something that those outside the Church, that is, gentiles, cannot do. For this reason those inside the Church stand in greater danger of condemnation. What is more, those inside the Church are capable of formulating and adopting false assumptions that are contrary to truths of faith themselves, whereas those outside the Church cannot do so because they have no knowledge of those truths. Thus those inside the Church are capable of profaning sacred truths, but not those outside. For more on these matters, see Volume One, in 1059, 1327, 1328.

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