It is then
that he knows the natures of things; that he estimates their uses and
their ends, and that he will never stretch these beyond their proper
bounds. Beholding animals in this sublime light, he will appreciate
their strength, their capacities, and their feelings; and he will never
use them but for the purposes intended by providence. It is then that
the creation will delight him. It is then that he will find a growing
love to the animated objects of it. And this knowledge of their natures,
and this love of them, will oblige him to treat them with tenderness and
respect. Hence all animals will have a security in the breast of every
christian or renovated man against oppression or abuse. He will never
destroy them wantonly, nor put them to unnecessary pain. Now the Quakers
are of opinion, that every person, who professes christianity, ought to
view things as the man, who is renovated, would view them, and that it
becomes them therefore in particular, as a body of highly professing
christians, to view them in the same manner. Hence they uniformly look
upon animals, not as brute-machines, to be used at discretion, but as
the creatures of God, of whose existence the use and intention ought
always to be considered, and to whom duties arise out of this spiritual
feeling, independently of any written law in the Old-Testament, or any
grant or charter, by which their happiness might be secured.
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