THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 297 
many topics have been maintained fuccefsfully upon much 
more flender grounds. God, the author of life, and the beft 
judge of what was proper to maintain it, gave this regimen 
to our firft parents—“ Behold, I have given you every herb 
“ bearing feed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and e- 
“very tree, in the whichis the fruit of a tree yielding feed: to 
“ you it fhall be for meat *.” And though, immediately after, 
he mentions both beafts and fowls, and every thing that 
creepeth upon the earth, he does not fay that he has defign- 
ed any of thefe as meat for man. On the contrary, he 
feems to have intended the vegetable creation as food for 
- both man and beaft—“ And to every beaft of the earth 
“and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that 
“creepeth* upon the earth, wherein ¢here is life, | have given 
“every green herb for meat: and it was fot.” After the 
flood, when mankind began to repoflefs the earth, God gave 
_Noah a much more extenfive. permiflion—* Every moving 
“ thing that liveth fhall be meat for you ; evenas the green 
“ herb have I given you all things {.” 
As the criterion of judging-of their aptitude for food 
was declared to be their moving and having 4/, a danger ap- 
peared of mifinterpretation, and that thefe creatures fhould 
be ufed living ; a thing which God by no means intended, 
and therefore, immediately after, it is faid, “ But flefh with 
“ the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, fhall you not 
“eat §;” or, as it is rendered by the beft interpreters, ‘ Flefh, or 
roembers, torn from living animals having the blood in 
them, thou fhalt nor eat.’ We fee then, by this prohibition, that 
Vor. If. LO eo this 
Fs 
* Gen, chap. i.ver, 29. + Gen. chap. i. ver. 32. {-Gen. chap. ix. ver. 3. § Gen. chap.ix. v. 4. 
