19. think not eating the unclean, then, a trifling offense.
20. For transgression of the law, whether in small or great matters, is of equal moment;
21. for in either case the law is equally slighted.
22. But you deride our philosophy, as though we lived irrationally in it.
23. Yet it instructs us in temperance, so that we are superior to all pleasures and lusts; and it exercises us in manliness, so that we cheerfully undergo every grievance.
24. And it instructs us in justice, so that in all our dealings we render what is due; and it teaches us piety, so that we worship the one only God becomingly.
25. Wherefore it is that we eat not the unclean; for believing that the law was established by God, we are convinced that the Creator of the world, in giving his laws, sympathizes with our nature.
26. Those things which are convenient to our souls, he has directed us to eat; but those which are repugnant to them, he has interdicted.
27. But, tyrant-like, you not only force us to break the law, but also to eat, that you may ridicule us as we thus profanely eat:
28. but you shall not have this cause of laughter against me;
29. nor will I transgress the sacred oaths of my forefathers to keep the law.