“To this might we add that transporting consideration, becoming both our veneration and admiration, of the infinitely wise and glorious Author of Nature, who has given to plants such astonishing properties; such fiery heat in some to warm and cherish; such coolness in others to temper and refresh; such pinguid juice to nourish and feed the body; such quickening acids to compel the appetite, and grateful vehicles to court the obedience of the palate; such vigour to renew and support our natural strength; such ravishing flavours and perfumes to recreate and delight us; in short, such spirituous and active force to animate and revive every part and faculty to all kinds of human and, I had almost said, heavenly capacity. “What shall we add more? Our gardens present us with them all: and, while the Shambles are covered with gore and stench, our Salads escape the insults of the summer-fly, purify and warm the blood against winter rage. Nor wants there variety in more abundance than any of the former ages could show.” Evelyn produces an imposing array of the “Old Fathers”:-- “In short, so very many, especially of the Christian profession, advocate it [the bloodless food] that some even of the ancient fathers themselves have thought that the permission of eating flesh to Noah and his sons was granted them no otherwise than repudiation of wives was to the Jews--namely--for the hardness of their hearts and to satisfy a murmuring generation.”[130] He is “persuaded that more blood has been shed between Christians” through addiction to the sanguinary food than by any other cause:-- “Not that I impute it _only_ to our eating blood; but I sometimes wonder how it happened that so strict, so solemn, and famous a sanction--not upon a ceremonial account, but (as some affirm) a moral and perpetual one, for which also there seem to be fairer proofs than for most other controversies agitated amongst Christians--should be so generally forgotten, and give place to so many other impertinent disputes and cavils about superstitious fopperies which frequently end in blood and cutting of throats.”[131] It is opportune here to refer to the sentiments of Evelyn’s contemporary and political and ecclesiastical opposite--the great Puritan poet and patriot--one of the very greatest names in all literature. Milton’s feeling, so far as he had occasion to express it, is quite in unison with the principles of dietetic reform, and in sympathy with aspirations after the more spiritual life. In one of his earliest writings, on the eve of the production of one of the finest poems of its kind in the English language--the _Ode to Christ’s Nativity_, composed at the age of twenty-one--he thus writes in Latin verse to his friend Charles Deodati, recommending the purer diet at all events to those who aspired to the nobler creations of poetry:--