Carnality

“ It is to men of this kind, then, that is, to animal men, he shortly after says, "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal." [19] And this is to be interpreted by the same usage, a part being taken for the whole. For both the soul and the flesh, the component parts of man, can be used to signify the whole man; and so the animal man and the carnal man are not two different things, but one and the same thing, viz. man living according to man. ”

“ How much worldliness, how much ambition among men, how much seeking for the honor that comes from man—all the fruit of the carnal life—to be found in the midst of Christian activity! Let us remember that the carnal state is a state of continual sinning and failure, and God wants us not only to make confession of individual sins, but to come to the acknowledgment that they are the sign that we are not living a healthy life,—we are yet carnal. ”

“ Had Nature intended man to be an animal of prey, would she have implanted in his breast an instinct so adverse to her purpose?... Would she not rather, in order to enable him to brave the piercing cries of anguish, have wrapped his ruthless heart in ribs of brass, and with iron entrails have armed him to grind, without shadow of remorse, the palpitating limbs of agonising life? But has Nature winged the feet of men with fleetness to overtake the flying prey? And where are his fangs to tear asunder the beings destined for his food? Does the lust of carnage glare in his eye-balls? ”

“ Now it is exactly this character which essentially distinguishes animals of prey from others. The former, those at least of the larger species, have generally an extreme repugnance, not only for cooked flesh, but even for that which has lost its freshness. Man, then, is not carnivorous but under certain abnormal conditions; and his senses, to which he appeals in support of his carnivorousness, are perverted to such a degree, that he would devour his fellow-man without perceiving it, if they served him up in place of veal, the flesh of which is said to have the same taste. ”

“ But it is to be asked, does the mere quality of carnivorousness necessarily imply an evil, cruel, or malicious disposition in the animal? It certainly does not: and this is a very important distinction: all or most fierce and cruel animals are indeed carnivorous, but all carnivorous animals are not therefore fierce. ”

“ The Bible nowhere speaks about "the carnal nature," and so certainly not about "the eradication of the carnal nature." There is such a thing as a carnal nature, but it is not a material thing, not a substance, not a something that can be eradicated as you pull a tooth or remove the vermiform appendix. "A carnal nature" is a nature controlled by the flesh. Certainly it is a believer's privilege not to have his nature governed by the flesh. Our nature should be and may be under the control of the Holy Spirit, and then it is not a carnal nature ”

“ There is no exception to this law. This principle obtains not only in the production of life, but in the processes of its development. If my position about the intimacy of soul and body is true, then, if a man’s body is made up chiefly of flesh taken from diseased animals, and his whole physical frame is satu [Pg 15] rated with the irritating and exciting condiments of what is popularly called good food, the whole bias of his bodily powers will be toward animalism. All the impressions and impulses that the soul receives from such a body are beastly and debasing. ”

“ Compelled to deny and subject the body, what do I then but get me a pig and feed it, and scratch it, and bed it in order to see it fatten and to hear it snore? The flesh cries out for indulgence; but the spirit demands virtue; and a pig, being the virtue of indulgence, satisfies the flesh and is winked at by the soul. ”

“ It is true that some animals are carnivorous ; if a cat were to refuse a mouse, her conduct might conceivably be argued to be unnatural, and, therefore, immoral. But it is equally true that other animals are not carnivorous ; we are not so unreasonable as to expect a horse to eat rats and mice—why, then, should it be unnatural or ungrateful in a man to decline to prey upon the lower animals? The flesh-eater must prove that man is actually a carnivorous rather than a frugivorous being ”

“ To see the convulsions, agonies, and tortures of a poor fellow-creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify luxury, and tickle callous and rank organs, must require a rocky heart, and a great degree of cruelty and ferocity. I cannot find any great difference, on the foot of natural reason and equity only, between feeding on human flesh and feeding on brute animal flesh, except custom and example. ”

“ He was then hungry and longing for human flesh. Shaking his dry and grizzly locks and scratching them with his fingers pointed upwards, the large-mouthed cannibal repeatedly looked at the sleeping sons of Pandu yawning wistfully at times. Of huge body and great strength, of complexion like the colour of a mass of clouds, of teeth long and sharp-pointed and face emitting a sort of lustre, he was ever pleased with human flesh. ”

“ And just so a believer can allow the flesh to have so much power over him that becomes "carnal." Every object is named according to its most prominent characteristic. If a man is a babe in Christ and has a little of the Holy Spirit and a great deal of the flesh, he is called carnal, for the flesh is his chief mark. If he gives way, as the Corinthians did, to strife, temper, division, and envy, he is a carnal Christian. He is a Christian, but a carnal one. ”

“ While I—good Heaven!—have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts; and walk abroad a moving Rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the Charnel-house of Nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me more slowly! ”

“ The fact that, in highly developed organisms, some parts are less susceptible of pleasure and pain might as easily be construed into an argument that corresponding parts of lower organisms differ, in the same manner, in susceptibility. Furthermore, sensation being admitted, as Carneri admits it, or rather asserts it, of all forms of animal life, it is difficult to conceive how he can interpret the phenomena of appetition and repulsion as devoid of feeling. ”

“ In the light of totemistic ways of thinking we see plainly enough the relation of man to food-animals. You need or at least desire flesh food, yet you shrink from slaughtering ‘your brother the ox’; you desire his mana, yet you respect his tabu, for in you and him alike runs the common life-blood. ”

“ The carnal mind is enmity with God, not subject to His laws; but the carnal mind is in competition with a human nature, wherein are found emotions [Pg 14] and sentiments that are far from being all sinful: sympathy, tenderness, benevolence, paternal and filial love, sex-love, and honesty. Again, we rarely find environment as an unmixed evil. Notwithstanding these hindrances the press almost daily has details and delineations of crimes so fearful and shocking that no trace of the human appears. ”

“ What reason our domestic animals have for despising the human race! And with strange perversity we pick out the most inoffensive animals for slaughter. There might be an element of justice in preying upon beasts of prey, but we prefer to slay the harmless deer and cow and sheep. Is carnivorous flesh offensive? Then, why do we make our own flesh offensive by being carnivorous? ”

“ The writer has abstained from flesh about forty-five years, having become convinced when a lad of fourteen or fifteen, by reading, observation, reflection and instinct, that the use of animal food tends to degrade and brutalize the human race, and keep it in subjection to the animal appetites and passions. ”

“ Unfortunately, unable clearly to distinguish between the true and the false—between the accidental and fanciful and the permanent and real—timidly cautious of approving anything which seemed connected with heresy—the leaders of the dominant body were prone to seek refuge in a middle course, in regard to the question of flesh-eating, scarcely consistent with strict logic or strict reason. ”

“ But the domestic Hog, the Sheep, the Cow, the Dog, are subject to an incredible variety of distempers, and, like the corruptors of their nature, have physicians who thrive upon their miseries. The super-eminence of man is, like Satan’s, the super-eminence of pain; and the majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease, and crime, have reason to curse the untoward event that, by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised him above the level of his fellow-animals. ”

“ As it was, our carelessness had been productive of more good than harm, for the skins of the beasts would make us some warm clothing, while their flesh would afford us food for a long time, if we could get no other fresh meat. ”

“ Now that I am again led to speak of cannibals, let me ask those who maintain, that the want of food first brings men to feed on human flesh, what is it that induces the Feejee people to keep it up in the midst of plenty? ”

“ Certainly the food that one eats has a psychological effect, and the flesh-eaters among the human race have a different temperament as a rule from the fruit and vegetable eaters, while among the animals (though other causes may come in here) the Carnivora are decidedly more cruel and less gentle than the Herbivora. ”

“ Thus the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes became, under his explanation, an illustration of the truth that men were to labor for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life. And when his disciples were inclined grossly to misunderstand the command that they were to eat his flesh and drink his blood, He declared to them, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." ”

“ Because he observes that carnivorous men, unrestrained by reflection or sentiment, even refine on the cruel practices of the most savage animals; and apply their resources of mind and art to prolong the miseries of the victims of their appetites, skinning, roasting, and boiling, animals alive, and torturing them without reservation or remorse, if they add thereby to the variety or the delicacy of their carnivorous gluttonies. ”

“ All these evils are superseded by the establishment of a controlling Power in the carnivore; by their agency the numbers of each species are maintained in due proportion to one another—the sick, the lame, the aged, and the supernumeraries, are consigned to speedy death; and while each suffering individual is soon relieved from pain, it contributes its enfeebled carcass to the support of its carnivorous benefactor, and leaves more room for the comfortable existence of the healthy survivors of its own species. ”

“ Observe, by the way, what pains are to be taken, not only for the earning, but for the preparing of our necessary food; and yet, after all, it is meat that perishes. Shall we then grudge to labour much more for the meat which endures to everlasting life? Bread-corn is bruised. ”

“ If a man meet accidentally at a table with meat that is grateful to his palate, but hurtful to the present temper of his body, doth the presenting this sort of food to him strip him of his liberty to decline it, as well as to feed of it? Can the food have any internal influence upon his will, and lay the freedom of it asleep whether he will or no? ”

“ And ah! [he exclaims] how much more innocent, sweet, and healthful is a table covered with those than with all the reeking flesh of butchered and slaughtered animals. Certainly man by nature was never made to be a carnivorous animal, nor is he armed at all for prey and rapine, with jagged and pointed teeth and crooked claws sharpened to rend and tear, but with gentle hands to gather fruit and vegetables, and with teeth to chew and eat them. ”

“ Because, observing that carnivorous propensities among Animals are accompanied by a total want of sympathetic Feelings, and humane Sentiments, as in the hyaena, the tyger, the vulture, the eagle, the crocodile, and the shark; he conceives that the practices of those carnivorous brutes afford no worthy example for the imitation or justification of rational, reflecting, and conscientious, Beings. ”

“ Panurge was quite aware of the contagion of example, that is to say the action of the imagination, when, to avenge himself upon a merchant on board the same boat, he bought his biggest sheep and threw it into the sea, certain beforehand that the entire flock would follow, which indeed happened.
We human beings have a certain resemblance to sheep, and involuntarily, we are irresistibly impelled to follow other people's examples, imagining that we cannot do otherwise. ”

“ The skin of the men, he remarks, was superior in toughness (consistance) and quality to shamoy; that of women was good for almost nothing, being so soft in texture! [734] —History looking back over Cannibalism, through Purchas’s Pilgrims and all early and late Records, will perhaps find no terrestrial Cannibalism of a sort on the whole so detestable. It is a manufactured, soft-feeling, quietly elegant sort; a sort perfide! Alas then, is man’s civilisation only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever? Nature still makes him ”

“ The chiefe lust of the flesh, whereby men are wont to be seduced, is the love of carnall liberty.
This is gathered from the beginning of verse 19. So Psalme 2.3.
Reason 1. Because the flesh alwayes seeketh its peace and quietnesse, which it cannot enjoy, but by giving it selfe over unto the lusts thereof; and hence it is that carnall men account the command of God and his Word, a yoke, ♦and strong cords, and bands, &c.
♦ “aud” replaced with “and”
2. ”