Book of Common Prayer

The weak ought not to be held in disdain. No person should occasion harm to another’s conscience. Again, no one should condemn another for outward things.

14 Him who is weak in the faith, receive to yourselves – not in disputing and troubling his conscience. ² One believes that he may eat all things; another, who is weak, eats vegetables. ³ Let not him who eats look down on him who does not. And let not him who abstains judge one who eats, for God has received him. ⁴ Who are you, to judge another man’s servant? Whether he stands or falls pertains to his master; yea, he will stand, because God is able to make him stand.

⁵ This man distinguishes between day and day, another counts all days alike. See to it that no one wavers in his own purpose: ⁶ he who observes one day over another does it for the Lord’s pleasure, and he who does not observe one day over another does it also to please the Lord. He who eats does it to please the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat abstains to please the Lord at the same time, and gives God thanks. ⁷ For none of us lives as his own servant, and neither does any of us die his own servant. ⁸ If we live, we live to be at the Lord’s will, and if we die, we die at the Lord’s will. Therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. ⁹ It is for this that Christ died and rose up and recovered life: to be Lord of both the dead and the living.

¹⁰ But why do you then judge your brother? Or, why do you despise your brother? We shall all be brought before the judgment seat of Christ. ¹¹ For it is written: As surely as I live, says the Lord, all knees will bow to me, and all tongues will acknowledge God. ¹² So then, every one of us will give an account of himself to God.

²⁶ And they sailed to the region of the Gadarenes, which is across from Galilee. ²⁷ And as he went out to land, there met him a certain man from the place, who had for a long time had a devil. And he wore no clothes; neither did he live in a house, but among graves. ²⁸ When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the God Most High? I beseech you, torment me not! ²⁹ For Jesus commanded the foul spirit to come out of the man. For it often affected him violently, and he was bound with chains and kept with shackles, but he broke the bonds, and was carried by the fiend into wilderness areas.

³⁰ And Jesus asked him, saying, What is your name? And he said, Legion (because many devils were entered into him). ³¹ And the devils besought Jesus not to command them to go out into the deep. ³² There was nearby a herd of many swine feeding on a hill, and the devils besought him to suffer them to enter into the swine. And he suffered them. ³³ Then the devils went out of the man and entered into the swine. And the herd took their course and ran headlong into the lake, and were drowned.

³⁴ When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the town and in the villages. ³⁵ And people came out to see what had been done, and came to Jesus, and found the man out of whom the devils were departed sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. ³⁶ Those also who had witnessed it told them how the demon-possessed man was healed. ³⁷ And all the whole population from the country of the Gadarenes besought Jesus to depart from them, for they were taken with great fear.

And he got into the boat and turned back again. ³⁸ Then the man from whom the devils were departed asked him if he could be with him. But Jesus sent him away, saying, ³⁹ Go home again into your own house, and show what great things God has done for you.

And the man went his way, and preached throughout all the city about the great things Jesus had done for him.