many topics have been maintained successfully upon much more slender grounds. God, the author of life, and the best judge of what was proper to maintain it, gave this regimen to our first parents—"Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed: to you it shall be for meat[1]." And though, immediately after, he mentions both beasts and fowls, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, he does not say that he has designed any of these as meat for man. On the contrary, he seems to have intended the vegetable creation as food for both man and beast—"And to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so[2]." After the flood, when mankind began to repossess the earth, God gave Noah a much more extensive permission—"Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things[3]."
As the criterion of judging of their aptitude for food was declared to be their moving and having life, a danger appeared of misinterpretation, and that these creatures should be used living; a thing which God by no means intended, and therefore, immediately after, it is said, "But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall you not eat[4];" or, as it is rendered by the best interpreters, 'Flesh, or members, torn from living animals having the blood in them, thou shalt not eat.' We see then, by this prohibition, thatthis
