“Most men will, in words, confess that there is no blessing this world affords comparable to health. Yet rarely do any of them value it as they ought to do till they feel the want of it. To him that hath obtained this goodly gift the meanest food—even bread and water—is most pleasant, and all sorts of exercise and labour delightful. But the contrary makes all things nauseous and distasteful. What are full-spread Tables, Riches, or Honours, to him that is tormented with distempers? In such a condition men do desire nothing so much as Health. But no sooner is that obtained, but their thoughts are changed, forgetting those solemn promises and resolutions they made to God and their own souls, going on in the old road of Gluttony, taking little or no care to continue that which they so much desired when they were deprived of it.
“Happy it were if men did but use the tenth part of that care and diligence to preserve their minds and bodies in Health, as they do to procure those dainties and superfluities which do generate Diseases, and are the cause of committing many other evils, there being but few men that do know how to use riches as they ought. For there are not many of our wealthy men that ever consider that as little and mean food and drink will suffice to maintain a lord in perfect health as it will a peasant, and render him more capable of enjoying the benefits of the Mind and pleasures of the Body, far beyond all ‘dainties and superfluities.’ But, alas! the momentary pleasures of the Throat-Custom, vanity, &c., do ensnare and entice most people to exceed the bounds of necessity or convenience; and many fail through a false opinion or misunderstanding of Nature—childishly imagining that the richer the food is, and the more they can cram into their bellies, the more they shall be strengthened thereby. But experience shews to the contrary; for are not such people as accustom themselves to the richest foods, and most cordial drinks, generally the most infirm and diseased?
“Now the sorts of foods and drinks that breed the best blood and finest spirits, are Herbs, Fruits, and various kinds of Grains; also Bread, and sundry sorts of excellent food made by different preparations of Milk, and all dry food out of which the sun hath exhaled the gross humidity, by which all sorts of Pulses and Grains become of a firmer substance. So, likewise, Oil is an excellent thing, in nature more sublime and pure than Butter.” ...
As to the unsuspected cause of the various diseases so abundant:—
“Many of the richest sort of people in this nation might know by woful experience, especially in London, who do yearly spend many hundreds, I think I may say thousands, of pounds on their ungodly paunches. Many of whom may save themselves that charge and trouble they are usually at in learning of Monsieur Nimble-heels, the Dancing-Master, how to go upright; for their bellies are swollen up to their chins, which forces them ‘to behold the sky,’[296] but not for contemplation sake you may be sure, but out of pure necessity, and without any more impressions of reverence towards the Almighty Creator than their fellow-brutes; for their brains are sunk into their bellies; injection and ejection is the business of their life, and all their precious hours are spent between the platter and the glass and the close-stool. Are not these fine fellows to call themselves Christians and Right-Worshipfuls.”[297]
In his xiv chapter, “Of Flesh and its Operation on the Body and Mind,” Tryon employs all his eloquence in proving that the practice of slaughtering for food is not only cruel and barbarous in itself, but originates, or, at all events, intensifies the worst passions of men.
Eulogising the milder manners of the followers of Pythagoras, and of the Hindus generally, he tells his countrymen that:—
“The very same, and far greater, advantages would come to pass amongst Christians, if they would cease from contention, oppression, and (what tends and disposes them thereunto) the killing of other animals, and eating their flesh and blood; and, in a short time, human murders and devilish feuds and cruelties amongst each other would abate, and, perhaps, scarce have a being amongst them. For separation has greater power than most imagine, whether it be from evil or from good; for whatever any man separates himself from, that property in him presently is weakened. Likewise, separation from cruelty does wonderfully dispel the dark clouds of ignorance, and makes the understanding able to distinguish between the good and evil principles—first in himself, and then in all other things proportionably. But so long as men live under the power of all kinds of uncleanness, violence, and oppression, they cannot see any evil therein. For this cause, those who do not separate themselves from these evils, but are contented to follow the multitude in the left-hand-way, and resolve to continue the religion of their fore-fathers—though thereby they do but continue mere Custom, the greatest of tyrants—’tis, I say, impossible for such people ever to understand or know anything truly, either of divine or of human things....
“It is a grand mistake of people in this age to say or suppose: That Flesh affords not only a stronger nourishment, but also more and better than Herbs, Grains, &c.; for the truth is, it does yield more stimulation, but not of so firm, a substance, nor so good as that which proceeds from the other food; for flesh has more matter for corruption, and nothing so soon turns to putrefaction. Now, ’tis certain, such sorts of food as are subject to putrify before they are eaten, are also liable to the same afterwards. Besides, Flesh is of soft, moist, gross, phlegmy quality, and generates a nourishment of a like nature; thirdly, Flesh heats the body, and causeth a drought; fourthly, Flesh does breed great store of noxious humours; fifthly, it must be considered that ‘beasts’ and other living creatures are subject to diseases[298] and many other inconveniences, and uncleannesses, surfeits, over-driving, abuses of cruel butchers, &c., which renders their flesh still more unwholesome. But on the contrary, all sorts of dry foods, as Bread, Cheese, Herbs, and many preparations of Milk, Pulses, Grains, and Fruits; as their original is more clean, so, being of a sound firm nature, they afford a more excellent nourishment, and more easy of concoction; so that if a man should exceed in quantity, the Health will not, thereby, be brought into such danger as by the superfluous eating of flesh....
“What an ill and ungrateful sight is it to behold dead carcasses, and pieces of bloody, raw, flesh! It would undoubtedly appear dreadful, and no man but would abhor to think of putting it in his mouth, had not Use and Custom from generation to generation familiarised it to us, which is so prevalent, that we read in some countries the mode is to eat the bodies of their dead parents and friends, thinking they can no way afford them a more noble sepulchre than their own bowells. And because it is usual, they do it with as little regret or nauseousness as others have when they devour the leg of a Rabbit or the wing of a Lark. Suppose a person were bred up in a place where it were not a custom to kill and eat flesh, and should come into our Leadenhall Market, or view our Slaughter Houses, and see the communication we have with dead bodies, and how blythe and merry we are at their funerals, and what honourable sepulchres we bury the dead carcasses of beasts in—nay, their very guts and entrails—would he not be filled with astonishment and horror? Would he not count us cruel monsters, and say we were brutified, and performed the part of beasts of prey, to live thus on the spoils of our fellow-creatures?