Note 191 — XXXI. PALEY. 1743–1805.

Moral and Political Philosophy, i., 2. It is deeply to be deplored that Dr. Paley is in a very small minority amongst christian theologians, of candour, honesty, and feeling sufficient to induce them to dispute at all so orthodox a thesis as the right to slaughter for food. That he is compelled, by the force of truth and honesty, to abandon the popular pretexts and subterfuges, and to seek refuge in the supposed authority of the book of Genesis, is significant enough. Of course, to all reasonable minds, such a course is tantamount to giving up the defence of kreophagy altogether; and, if it were not for theological necessity, it would be sufficiently surprising that Paley’s intelligence or candour did not discover that if flesh-eating is to be defended on biblical grounds, so, by parity of reasoning, are also to be defended—slavery, polygamy, wars of the most cruel kind, &c.