TENTH DIVISION. Consists of arguments to prove, that neither the dispositions nor death of the animal creation was occasioned by man's fall into sin, as is supposed by many. Between the beasts that graze, or those that prowl, No bond nor tie by which the fatal sin, Could reach the brutal state to give them pain; No change from tame to wild, through all the ranks of brute, THAT innumerable evils are consequent upon the sin of Adam, is evident; and that it extends to all his posterity with its baleful influences, is but too true; and that God has pronounced a curse upon the ground on account of man's sin, and appointed it to be finally destroyed by fire at the last day, which could never have been its miserable end if man had not sinned. Yet the sin of man has not, in its effects, reached the animal creation, so as to become the first cause of their dissolution. If it is thought the sin of the parent should not be required at the hand of the child, so as to subject it to direct punishment, either in this life or the life to come, wherefore, then, shall the sin of man be required at the hand of the animal creation, so as to subject them to a natural death? Surely there is no relation between man and beasts, by which a communication of the fatal effects of sin could reach a dumb animal. No man will allow such a relation can exist. But Adam, being the father of the human race, has therefore communicated the baleful effects of his sin to his progeny; which could not possibly be otherwise, on account of the strict natural relation existing between us. If our first parent had not sinned, his children would not have been depraved. Therefore Adam, not being the father of the animal world, could not affect their nature by his sin. We know that God is just, and consequently requires of his creatures according to the ability bestowed in the constitution of such creatures as he has made. Upon this ground, it is evident God requires nothing of the dumb beasts; for the grade of their free agency does not ascend high enough to distinguish between the moral difference of actions. Therefore, because a beast does not possess a rational soul, God has not subjected them to any law which can make them accountable; for the only law that is discoverable in the animal creation is that of instinct. No beast is at all conscious of any reason why he has fled, why he has eat, why he has drank, why he has been frightened, why he has been at rest, or even that he exists at all, any more than does inert matter. See note on page 289. It would, therefore, be unjust to subject the beast of the field to suffer death, on account of the error of a dissimilar kind of being, which I consider is as absurd as to transfer the consequences of Adam's sin to the inhabitants of some other planet. Their death, therefore, must be accounted for on some other principle. But the folly of supposing them subjected to death for Adam's sin, shows itself from another view, which is this: If justice and righteousness are eternal principles, then, in a strict relation to this subject, it will follow, that God would never have slain animals, if it was wrong, with the skins of which to make coats for Adam and Eve after their fall, and with whose flesh was undoubtedly made the first burnt offering to God, in reference to the promised Messiah. Then it will follow, that the life of beasts are to be inviolate on that principle, and no exigence whatever could justify their death. But that it is not wrong to take the life of animals, God himself has shown us, by his own example, when first he slew beasts for the accommodation of the naked couple. We find Abel, the second son of Adam, familiar with this thing when he made his burnt sacrifice, which so provoked his brother Cain; and I cannot doubt but flesh was in fact the food of the antedeluvians as much as in subsequent ages and that animals was the most natural food, and the easiest come at in those early days, is perfectly reasonable. If it was just for Noah and his posterity to use them as food, then it was as just and as proper immediately after the fall as at any time since; and I do not doubt but flesh would have become Bb the food of man, even if he had never sinned; for what other purpose could they have been created? From these circumstances, therefore, I conclude, that it is not radically nor relatively wrong to kill an animal for any good purpose; and that the sin of man did not procure the death of animals in any sense, is evident, at least to me, from the above reasons. It has pleased God to introduce his creature man into existence, with a corporeal body, and has appointed food for its subsistence. Now, as God has diffused throughout all his works the principle of life, therefore, in the composition of all kinds of fruit, is contained real animal life, and also in water, or any, substances whether dense or rare. "There is not a drop' of pure and living water but contains not less than 30,000 perfect animals, furnished with the whole appa--ratus of bones, muscles, nerves, heart, arteries, veins, lungs, viscera, and animal spirits,” (Dr. Clark) which are discoverable by the use of glasses. Death, in relation to these, was therfore in the world before the sin of man. Innumerable deaths must, therefore, have been the consequence, whenever man put forth the axe or plough, as was certainly intended he should do in order to subdue the earth, forthus he was commanded beforehe fell Consequently the passing plowshare would have crushed -the falling forest would have killed-and the consuming fire, for the removal of timber, would have destroyed multitudes of feeble life. even if man had never fallen. We judge, therefore, that sin has brought death upon none but offending man, which death was effected by his removal from the tree of life; for upon him was death threatened, but not upon any of God's works beside-it being perfectly natural to all animal life from the beginning. Yes, even man had even this mortal tendency; but the tree of life was the grand preventive till he had sinned. It is a scriptural fact, that God at first blessed the animal creation by saying unto them, Multiply, &c. Upon which principle, therefore, it would not have been necessary that a great many years should have passed away, before each particular kind of animal would, from their perpetual multiplication, have filled up all the space under the whole heaven-the consequence of which would have been a general and particular destruction of all land animals, occasioned by their own numbers. A general crush of all bodies must have succeeded finally, if starvation and disease, engendered by the vastness of their numbers, had not destroyed them sooner. Next to these, the myriads of the seas, in process of time, would have thrown their scaly billions from the ocean's bottom to the skies, and pushed on all the shores of all the seas, vast banks of putrefying fish!!! And from aloft, and stretched from pole to pole, the whole heaven would have swarmed with countless clouds of fowl, from where the beasts lay crushed to the highest point where clouds can soar. From this view we see, if God had not in his wis dom appointed from the beginning animal bodies to be the support of animal life, that the final consequence |