Not so, Lord... — The emphatic resistance even to a voice from heaven is strikingly in harmony with the features of St. Peter’s character, as portrayed in the Gospels, with the “Be it far from thee, Lord,” when he heard of the coming Passion (Matthew 16:22), with “Thou shalt never wash my feet,” in John 13:8. He had been taught that that which “goeth into the mouth cannot defile the man” (Mark 7:15), but he had not taken in that truth in its fulness, either in its literal or symbolic meaning.
Any thing that is common or unclean. — “Common” is used, as in Mark 7:2, in the sense of “defiled” or “impure,” that which excludes the idea of consecration to a special service.