“To this we reply,” says Tertullian, “that it was not proper that man should be burdened with an express command to abstain, who had not been able in fact, to support even so slight a prohibition as that of not to eat one single species of fruit; and, therefore, he was released from that stringency that, by the very enjoyment of freedom, he might learn to acquire strength of mind; and after the ‘flood,’ in the reformation of the human species, the simple command to abstain from blood sufficed, and the use of other things was freely left to his choice. Inasmuch as God had displayed his judgment through the ‘flood,’ and had threatened, moreover, exquisition of blood, whether at the hand of man or of beast, giving evident proof beforehand of the justice of his sentence, he left them liberty of choice and responsibility, supplying the material for discipline by the freedom of will, intending to enjoin abstinence by the very indulgence granted, in order, as we have said, that the primordial offence might be the better expiated by greater abstinence under the opportunity of greater license.” (_Quo magis, ut diximus, primordiale delictum expiaretur majoris abstinentiæ operatione in majoris licentiæ occasione._) He quotes the various passages in the Jewish Scriptures, in which the causes of the idolatrous proclivities and the crimes of the earlier Jews are connected by Jehovah and his prophets with flesh-eating and gross living:-- “Whether or no,” he proceeds, “I have unreasonably explained the cause of the condemnation of the ordinary food by God, and of the obligation upon us, through the divine will, to denounce it, let us consult the common conscience of men. Nature herself will inform us whether, before gross eating and drinking, we were not of much more powerful intellect, of much more sensitive feeling, than when the entire domicile of men’s interior has been stuffed with meats, inundated with wines, and, fermenting with filth in course of digestion, turned into a mere preparatory place for the draught (_Præmeditatorium latrinarum_).[57]