Once for all, let Parson Malthus explain his consistency with the religious text-book of his Church. Prior to the injunction given to men to increase and multiply, come, says Malthus, all the moral and physical laws without which they cannot increase or multiply. Suppose the command had been to increase and multiply not men but vegetables; this could not mean, “Sow the seed broadcast, in the air, over the sea, on stony ground,” but, “Take all the means made necessary, by pre-existing laws, to secure the best growth of vegetables.” That man would best obey the command, who should prepare the soil, and provide for the watering and tilling of it, where those things were wanting before. So he will best obey the command to increase and multiply Men, who prepares food for men where there was none before, and not he who brings them recklessly into the world without any such provision. “I believe it is the intention of the Creator that the earth should be replenished, but certainly with a healthy, virtuous, and happy population, not an unhealthy, vicious, and miserable one. And, if, in endeavouring to obey the command to increase and multiply, we people it only with beings of the latter description and suffer accordingly, we have no right to impeach the justice of the command, but our irrational mode of executing it.”[839] He might have added, that to give any other interpretation of the passage in Genesis is to forget the circumstances in which the words were spoken. The Deluge had just swept away all the earth’s inhabitants except one family, expressly on the score of wickedness; and, if a wicked replenishing were not desirable, an unhappy or a poor one would be at the best only one degree less so. Regarding the question then purely from the outside, we cannot find anything in the writings of Parson Malthus inconsistent with his ecclesiastical orthodoxy; and we can hardly believe that free-thinking Godwin was very serious in the objection.