17 wherefore we consider that we ought not in any point to transgress the law.
18 And indeed, were our law (as you suppose) not truly divine, and if we wrongly think it divine, we should have no right even in that case to destroy our sense of religion.
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.