Animal Creepers, we have already seen, were expressly forbidden as articles of food. The Creeper of which Noah was by this law allowed to eat, was, in our apprehension the vine; or grapes, of every kind, in common, or for food, even as they did the green herb, which fruits, the antideluvians had probably used only for sacred or religious purposes. In corroboration of this view of the subject, and as if designed to prevent any misapprehension as to the nature of the Creeper meant in this text, it is expressly written in the very same chapter, that "Noah planted a vineyard, that he drank of the wine, and that he was satisfied." There is, moreover, a further provision in the context of the law, that deserves our notice; by this they were mercifully prohibited from using the fruit of these creepers, when the flesh with the blood—that is, the pulp with the juice had acquired a life or spirit by standing together in a crushed state, till they had spontaneously fermented, and in consequence of this process, had actually become inebriating wine—alike injurious to the physical and moral life of man.
Such my Christian Friends is the plain unvarnished sense of our understanding of the law before us; a sense which neither militates against the wisdom, nor the immutability of God; a sense in perfect harmony with the first dietetic law given to mankind.
Our views, then, on the subject of a vegetable diet, as being that regimen designed for man by his Creator, so far, at least, as relates to the antediluvian world, or for a period of more than sixteen hundred years, are acceded to, without disputation, as being correct, and as borne out both by the natural and revealed laws of God; and though the supposition has been exceedingly prevalent, particularly among modern professors of Religion, that the Noahic Dispensation commenced with a grant, or precept, directing men to "kill and eat," we trust, the exposition of the
