Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/322

298 this abuse of eating living meat, or part of animals while yet alive, was known in the days of Noah, and forbidden after being so known, and it is precisely what is practised in Abyssinia to this day. This law, then, was prior to that of Moses, but it came from the same legislator. It was given to Noah, and consequently obligatory upon the whole world. Moses, however, insists upon it throughout his whole law; which, not only shews that this abuse was common, but that it was deeply rooted in, and interwoven with, the manners of the Hebrews. He positively prohibits it four times in one chapter in Deuteronomy, and thrice in one of the chapters of Leviticus —"Thou shalt not eat the blood, for the blood is the life; thou shalt pour it upon the earth like water."

the many instances of God's tenderness to the brute creation, that constantly occur in the Mosaical precepts, and are a very beautiful part of them, and tho' the barbarity of the custom itself might reasonably lead us to think that humanity alone was a sufficient motive for the prohibition of eating animals alive, yet nothing can be more certain, than that greater consequences were annexed to the indulging in this crime than what was apprehended from a mere depravity of manners. One of the most learned and sensible men that ever wrote upon the sacred scriptures observes, that God, in forbidding this practice, uses more severe certification, and more threatening language, than against any other sin, excepting idolatry, with which it is constantly joined. God declares, "I will set my face against him that eateth blood, in the same manner as I will against him that sacrificeth his son to Moloch; I will