"With sophistry their sauce they sweeten,
Till quite from tail to snout 'tis eaten."
So, one man will eat beef, but not pork, another will eat mutton, another fish, another bear's-meat, and perhaps another may be found that would not object to a dish of frogs, or snails; but no where can the man be found that will eat "every moving thing that liveth." Can we then reasonably believe that the Maker of all things, ever gave forth such a precept?
In the second place, the commonly accepted interpretion of this law is not in agreement with the declarations of the context: "Flesh with the life thereof which is the blood thereof shall ye not eat; for surely your blood of your lives will I require, at the hands of every Beast will I require it, as at the hands of man." The most inveterate devotee to the fashionable habit of flesh eating, will not surely contend that God, in this text, commanded men to eat flesh, and yet accompanied that precept with a clause in which he declares he will require the "blood of your lives" for every beast slain? If he had intended us to feed on flesh would he have accompanied the grant with such a clause?—Would he, as our Creator, have implanted in our bosoms a feeling of commiseration so hostile to his purpose?—Sympathies so potent for the suffering victim? Could he intend that we should eat our food with perpetual compunction, and unceasing disquietude—that every morsel should be purchased with a pang, and every meal empoisoned with remorse;—and to increase our consternation to the utmost, would he have imperatively declared he would require the blood of every slain beast at our hands, and have inspired his Prophet to announce unto us most solemnly that "He that killeth an ox is as if he slew
a man?" Yet all these interrogatories must be admitted affirmatively, if God has commanded us to eat "every moving thing that liveth."
