Volume 1

A reasonable plea for the animal creation : being a reply to a late pamphlet, intituled, A dissertation on the voluntary eating of blood, &c. In which is shewed, I. From the nature and reason of things, that we have no right to destroy, much less to eat of any thing which has life. II. That if the human food at first was only the produce of the earth, and by positive command made immutable, then that law or command must be immutably eternal / By Robert Morris.

  • Morris, Robert (Surveyor), 1702?-1754.
Date:
1746
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A reasonable plea for the animal creation : being a reply to a late pamphlet, intituled, A dissertation on the voluntary eating of blood, &c. In which is shewed, I. From the nature and reason of things, that we have no right to destroy, much less to eat of any thing which has life. II. That if the human food at first was only the produce of the earth, and by positive command made immutable, then that law or command must be immutably eternal / By Robert Morris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    72/78 (page 66)
    [66] c a Prohibition to feed on the Blood of any * Creature, was enjoin’d at firft to the whole € World, Page 32. without Exception, in c the Fathers of the prefent Race of Man- £ kind; and we find a folemn Ratification i of it in all the Promulgations of the Divine c Will to Man afterwards, and back’d by c fuch a complicated Authority in the laft £ of them as could never fincebe parallel’d, * and accordingly was it religioufly obferved c by the Chrifiians for feveral Ages, It is evident this Prohibition was given, but there is no Command to eat the Flesh ; he only contends for a Permiffion fo to do. In the 4th Chapter, he has carried it down to the Apoftle Peter and Paul, and to the primitive Chrifiians. I have no Need to trace the Author of the Diflertation any farther, becaufe I ac- quiefce to all he has faid relating to the Prohibition of eating of Blood ; but as to the eating of Flefh, which he as ftrenuoufly defends, I think it falls under the fame Pro¬ hibition. No Flefh can be without Blood, and confequently the eating of Flefh im¬ plies the eating of Blood : For Blood is the Life, and that Prohibition extended to the eating of any thing which had Life. There is but one Kind of Flefh, which is the Mufcular, and that confifts of little Tubes or Veffels with Blood therein ; fothat flefhy and mufcular Parts of the Body are the fame. Now,