and physical laws of an all-wise Creator are always in strict conformity with each other. Man was to increase, multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it;—to have dominion over all animals, in all climates: it is therefore consistent with all correct views of divine government to expect that he would receive such an organization from the divine hand as would render him capable of subsisting on the greatest variety of food,—the productions of all climates; with full liberty to use all such as he might be induced, by his instincts or reasoning faculties, to adopt, as circumstances might require. The flesh of animals, therefore, could not be excepted; for, in many climates, no other food could be procured.
21. But we are not thence to infer, that the digestive organs of man are the best adapted to an animal or even a mixed diet, (the contrary of which I hope to prove hereafter;) nor are we to conclude, that because animal food is permitted to man,3 therefore a more wholesome diet cannot be employed in situations where it can be procured. We must be careful to disguish between divine permission and divine command: there is a kind of relative fitness in morals as well as in physics; and what may be convenient and lawful in certain circumstances, may be highly improper in others, or under a different dispensation.
[Note 3. No branch of the scriptural argument is so much harped upon by our opponents as this "permission" to eat flesh; yet, what is passing strange, these same permissionists will acknowledge that God has, in the plainest possible language, commended or ordained the vegetable kingdom as the source of man's sustenance. The permission to have a plurality of wives in ancient times might as well be alleged against the modern notion of every man having "his own wife." All permission to violate a natural, a social, or a moral law, is accompanied with the condition that the wrongdoer suffer the penalty. T.]
22. God has permitted evil to exist,—moral as well as physical; but man is not justified, as a moral agent, in causing either. The Pharisees, when objecting to the teachings of Christ respecting marriage, said: "Why did Moses, then, command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so."[1] Under a former dispensation, a principle of retribution was admitted;—"an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth;"—"to love
- ↑ Matt, xix ,8
