blood: but, however, certain it is that the Church did, for divers ages, most religiously abstain from blood; and it was the great argument, by which the primitive Christians did confute the calumnies of the heathens imputing to them the drinking of human blood: they could not be supposed to do that, who so religiously abstained from the blood of beasts, as we find it argued in Tertullian,a Minutius, and Eusebius,f who also tells of Biblis, that she rather would die than eat blood in a pudding and in the canons commonly called Apostolical, it is forbidden to a clergyman to eat blood, under pain of deposition, to lay a man under excommunication: which law was mentioned and supposed obligatory in the second canon of the Council of Gangra; and long after by the canon of the Council in Trullo; by the Council of Worms under Ludovicus Pius;h by Pope Zechary, in his epistle to Boniface; and from hence the penitential books had warrant enough to impose canonical penances upon them that did taste this forbidden dish: and that they did so is known and confessed.

But to the question and inquiry, I answer, 1. That the abstinence from blood is not a law of nature or of eternal rectitude, as appears, first, in that it was not at all imposed upon the old world; but for a special reason given to the posterity of Noah to be as a bar to the ferity and inhuman blood-thirstiness of which the old giants were guilty, and possibly others might afterwards. For the Jews reckon but six precepts given to Adam and his posterity after the fall. The first, against strange worship; the second, of the worshipping the true God; the third, of the administration of justice; the fourth, of disclosing nakedness, or a prohibition of uncleanness; the fifth, against shedding blood; the sixth, against theft and indeed here are the heads of all natural laws; but because the old world grew cruel to beasts, and the giants were degenerated into a perfect ferity, and lived on blood; therefore it pleased God to superadd this to Noah, that they should not eat blood; that is, that they should not eat the flesh of beasts that were alive; that is, "flesh with

d In Ap. c. ix.

e In Octav.

f Eccles. Hist. lib. v. c. 1.

* Cap. lxii. Vide etiam Clemen. Alex. Pædag. lib. iii. c. 3. Niceph. lib. iv. c. 17; et idem videre est apud Lucianum in Pereg.

h Cap. lxv.

VOL. XII.

U

the blood :" and it is not to be despised that the drinking of blood is not forbidden, but the eating only: meaning, that the blood was not the main intention of the prohibition; but living flesh, that is, flesh so long as the blood runs from it: "flesh with the life thereof," that is, " with the blood:"i so run the words of the commandment; and therefore the doctors of the Jews expressed it by the not tearing a member of any live creature: which precept was the mounds of cruelty, God so restraining them from cruelty even to beasts, lest they might learn to practise it upon men. For God sometimes places some laws for defensatives to others; and, by removing men afar off from impiety, he secures their more essential duty. 2. But even this very precept is, by all the world, taught to yield to necessity and to charity, and cruelty to beasts is innocent when it is charity to men : and, therefore, though we do not eat them, yet we cut living pigeons in halves and apply them to the feet of men in fevers, and we rip the bellies of sheep, of horses, of oxen, to put into them the side of a paralytic; and although, to rude people and ignorant, such acts of security were useful, yet, to Christians, it is a disparagement to their most excellent institution, and the powers and prevalencies of God's Spirit, to think they are not upon better accounts secured in their essential duty. The Jews were defended from idolatry by a prohibition even of making and having images; but he is but a weak Christian who cannot see pictures without danger of giving them worship. 3. The secret is explicated by God in the place where he made the law: it was first a direct design to introduce mercy into the world, by taking care even of beasts: and, secondly, it was an outer guard against the crime of homicide: and Irenæus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, and St. Ambrose, expound the meaning of the whole affair to be nothing else but a prohibition of homicide: for as God would have men be gentle to beasts, so if beasts did kill a man, it should be exacted of them: neither the man's dominion over the beast could warrant his cruelty over them, nor the want of reason in beasts bring immunity if they killed a man, and the consequent and purpose of both these is expressed, verse 6, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood,

k

1 Verse 5.

by man shall his blood be shed;" and all this put together is a demonstration how dear lives are to God; even the life of beasts is, in one sense, sacred: for even then when they were given to man for food, yet the life was not; they must first be dead before they might be eaten but, therefore, the life of man was sacred in all senses, and should be required of man and beast. But that God doth even take care for oxen, in the matter of life, appears in this prohibition, “ Flesh with the life thereof ye shall not eat ;" that is, you shall not devour the flesh even while it is alive; for the blood is the life thereof; that is, when the blood is gone, you may eat, till then it is presumed to be alive. Now there can be no other meaning of the reason for if blood were here directly prohibited to be taken and drunk or eaten, this reason could not have concluded it, "Because it is the life, therefore you may not eat it,”—being no better an argument than this, 'you may not eat the heart of a beast, for it is the life thereof;' but the other meaning is proper, " Ye shall not eat flesh with the blood, which is the life thereof," that is, so long as the blood runs, so long ye must not eat; for so long it is alive and a beast may be killed, but not devoured alive. So that the prohibition of blood is not direct in the precept, but accidental; blood is forbidden, as it is the sign of life and the vehiculum' of the spirits, the instruments of life; and so long as it runs, so long the life abides ordinarily; and therefore Zonarus, in his notes upon the Council of Gangra, expounds the word aiua, or blood,' supposed in that canon as unlawful to be eaten or drunken, by stirndes ἐψόμενον, καὶ πηγνύμενον, — blood diligently or fast running or following the wound, and thick ;" that is, as I suppose, 'blood digested,' to distinguish it from serum sanguinis,' or the watery blood that is seen in beasts after they have bled, that they might not have scruple in minutes and little superstitions : χωρὶς ἐπιτηδευτοῦ αἵματος, — without active blood," so Balsamo; and it is not impertinent to the main inquiry, that it be observed that the Jews use life' instead of blood;' and so does the vulgar Latin; that we might the easier understand the meaning to be of life,' or living blood.' But then this is nothing to eating the blood, when

nai

m

6

6

m Vide S. Aug. lib. ii. c. 6, contra adversarium legis et prophetarum.

the beast is certainly dead: and, therefore, it is observable, that they who did make a scruple of eating blood, did not, all of them, make a scruple of eating things strangled in which the blood remained; and, therefore, in some copies of the apostolical decree," the word Tuxтou, or strangled,' is left out; and St. Austin observes, that in his time, in Africa, the Christians did not severely abstain from things strangled. For if the case were the same between blood running and blood settled and dead, then the reason of the commandment were nothing or not intelligible; and, besides, it would breed eternal scruples: since, in the very killing of beasts, there will some blood remain, and in the neck pieces and some veins every body hath observed some blood remaining even after the effusion by the knife. 4. This could not be a law of nature, because not mentioned by Christ in all his law, which I have already proved to be a perfect digest of the natural law only that sense of it which I have now given, is involved in a law of nature, and consequently enjoined by Christ, viz. under the precepts of mercy, according to that saying of the wise man," A good man will be merciful to his beast:" and the Athenians put a boy to death, because he took delight to prick out the eyes of birds, and so let them fly for his pastime; as supposing that he who exercised his cruelty upon birds, being a boy, would in time destroy men too. 5. Upon the account of this interpretation, we are to distinguish the material part from the formal; the blood, as it is such a substance, from the blood, as it is alive; just as the sidwλódura are to be differenced: for to eat the meat when it is sold in the shambles, is a thing indifferent, said St. Paul, though it was offered to idols; but this very meat might not be eaten in the temples, nor any where under that formality, as St. Paul there discourses: and, therefore, what the apostles, in their letter to the Churches, call sidwλóðura, St. James, in the decision of the question, calls yμara εἰδώλων, Tãv sidúλwv, —“ pollutions of idols," that is, all communications in their idolatrous portions and services: and so it is for blood; 'abstain from life blood, or blood that runs while the beast is dying;' that is, devour not the flesh while the beast is alive, be not cruel and unmerciful to your beast: but

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if blood be taken in its own materiality when the beast is dead, it may be eaten, as other things, without scruple; they being both in the same sense as in the same obligation,

Αἷμα δὲ μὴ φαγέειν, εἰδωλοθύτων δ ̓ ἀπέχεσθαι.

There is a letter and a spirit in both of them. 6. One thing only I shall add to make this appear to have been relative, temporal, and ceremonial; and that is, that when God was pleased to continue the command to the sons of Israel in Moses's law, he changed the reason, only reciting the old reason for which it was imposed to the posterity of Noah, and superadding a new one as relating to themselves: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for souls; your for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul."P So that to the blood there was superadded a new sacredness and religion; it was typical of the great sacrifice upon the cross, the blood of which was a holy thing, and it was also instrumental to their sacrifices and solemnities of their present religion: and, therefore, this ritual is to cease after that the great sacrifice is offered, and the great effusion of blood is past. But as they had a new reason, so also had they a new injunction, and they were interdicted the eating of any thing strangled; which they taking to be a pursuance of the precept given to Noah, were the more zealous of it; and lest their zeal might be offended, the first Christians, in their societies, thought fit to abstain from it. But this ever had a less obligation than the former, and neither of them had, in their letter, any natural obligation: but the latter was introduced wholly upon the Levitical account, and, therefore did cease with it. 7. After this so plain and certain commentary upon this precept, I shall the less need to make use of those other true observations made by other learned persons: as that this cánon was made for a temporary compliance of the Gentile proselytes with the Jewish converts, that this was not a command to abstain from blood, or strangled, but a declaration only that they were not obliged to circumcision; but they already having observed the other things, it was declared they need go no

P Levit. xvii. 11.