Book 15
He also is the first that did injoyne an abstinence
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To feede of any lyving thing. He also first of all
Spake thus: although ryght lernedly, yit to effect but small:
Yee mortall men, forbeare to frank your flesh with wicked foode.
Yee have both come and frutes of trees and grapes and herbes right good.
And though that sum bee harsh and hard: yit fyre may make them well
Both soft and sweete. Yee may have milk, and honny which dooth smell
Of flowres of tyme. The lavish earth dooth yeeld you plentiously
Most gentle foode, and riches to content bothe mynd and eye.
There needes no slaughter nor no blood to get your living by.
The beastes do breake theyr fast with flesh: and yit not all beastes neyther.
For horses, sheepe, and Rotherbeastes to live by grasse had lever.
The nature of the beast that dooth delyght in bloody foode,
Is cruell and unmercifull. As Lyons feerce of moode,
Armenian Tigers, Beares, and Woolves. Oh, what a wickednesse
It is to cram the mawe with mawe, and frank up flesh with flesh,
And for one living thing to live by killing of another:
As whoo should say, that of so great abundance which our moother
The earth dooth yeeld most bountuously, none other myght delyght
Thy cruell teethe to chawe uppon, than grisly woundes that myght
Expresse the Cyclops guyse? or else as if thou could not stawnche
The hunger of thy greedye gut and evill mannerd pawnche,
Onlesse thou stroyd sum other wyght. But that same auncient age
Which wee have naamd the golden world, cleene voyd of all such rage,
Livd blessedly by frute of trees and herbes that grow on ground,
And stayned not their mouthes with blood. Then birds might safe and sound
Fly where they listed in the ayre. The hare unscaard of hound
Went pricking over all the feeldes. No angling hooke with bayt
Did hang the seely fish that bote mistrusting no deceyt.
All things were voyd of guylefulnesse: no treason was in trust:
But all was freendshippe, love and peace. But after that the lust
Of one (what God so ere he was) disdeyning former fare,
To cram that cruell croppe of his with fleshmeate did not spare,
He made a way for wickednesse. And first of all the knyfe
Was staynd with blood of savage beastes in ridding them of lyfe.
And that had nothing beene amisse, if there had beene the stay.
For why wee graunt, without the breach of godlynesse wee may
By death confound the things that seeke to take our lyves away.
But as to kill them reason was: even so agein theyr was
No reason why to eate theyr flesh. This leawdnesse thence did passe
