"Eaters of flesh” could you decry
Our food and sacred laws,
Did you behold the lambkin die,
And feel yourselves the cause?
Lo! there it struggles I hear it moan
As stretch’d beneath the knife:
Its eye would melt a heart of stone
How meek it begs its life!
Had God, for man, its flesh designed
Matured by death the brute,
Lifeless, to us had been consigned,
As is the ripen'd fruit.
Hold, daring man! from murder stay :
God is the life in all.
You smite at God! when flesh you slay
Can such a crime be small?
Original note: Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh (Proverb 23:20 KJV)
Editor’s note: Pastor William Metcalfe (1788-1862), English-American founder of the vegetarian Philadelphia Bible Christian Church and the American Vegetarian Society, is a much underestimated veggie theologian. He is likely the first, or one of the first, theologians/priests after St. Jerome to proclaim or argue that vegetarianism is a core tenet of the Christian faith; and that Jesus is a veggie Christ
Article link: https://www.vegantheology.net/post/pleading-against-flesh-eating-a-hymn-by-pastor-william-metcalfe-ed-dr-chapman-chen
Sources:
Metcalfe, William (1840). Bible Testimony on Abstinence from the Flesh of Animals as Food: Being an Address Delivered in the Bible-Christian Church. Philadelphia: J. Metcalfe & Co., Chapt. 35.
Metcalfe, William and Metcalfe, Joseph (1872). Out of the Clouds into the Light. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
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