upon fruits and pulse, which were abundantly produced; and when, as Virgil remarks—
"No fences parted fields, nor marks, nor bounds
Distinguished acres of litigious grounds;
But all was common; and the fruitful earth
Was free to give her unexacted birth."[1]
7 Pope, in reference to the same period, observes:
"Nor think in Nature's state they blindly trod;
The state of Nature was the reign of God:
Self-love and social at her birth began;
Union the bond of all things, and of man.
Pride then was not, nor arts, that pride to aid;
Man walked with beast, joint-tenant of the shade
The same his table, and the same his bed;
No murder clothed him, and no murder fed.
In the same temple, the resounding wood,
All vocal beings hymned their equal God;
The shrine with gore unstained, with gold undrest,
Unbribed, unbloody, stood the blameless priest:
Heaven's attribute was universal care,
And man's prerogative to rule, but spare.
Ah! how unlike the man of times to come!
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb;
Who, foe to Nature, hears the general groan,
Murders their species, and betrays his own.
But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And every death its own avenger breeds;
The fury-passions from that blood began,
And turned on man a fiercer savage—man."[2]
8. Similar to this is the language of Thomson, in reference to the same period. Speaking of herbs, he says:
"But who their virtues can declare? "Who pierce,
With vision pure, into their secret stores
Of health, and life, and joy? The food of man,
While yet he lived in innocence, and told
A length of golden years; unfleshed in blood,
A stranger to the savage arts of life.
Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease;
The lord, and not the tyrant, of the world."[3]
9. This primeval state of innocence and bliss, however, did not long continue. Man forsook the way of peace; and, by vainly assuming a knowledge at variance with the law of his God and his nature, he ate of forbidden food, and thus lost the image in which he had been created. He was therefore no longer a fit inhabitant of Paradise; but was driven into less
