4 Maccabees 5:24

²²But thou deridest our philosophy, as though we lived irrationally in it.

²³Yet 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.

— 4 Maccabees 5:24 —

²⁵Wherefore 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.

²⁶Those things which are convenient to our souls, he has directed us to eat; but those which are repugnant to them, he has interdicted.