A case of conscience concerning eating of blood, considered and answered

A CASE of Conscience Concerning Eating of Blood, Considered and Answered.

Concerning that Case of Conscience, Whether the Eating of Blood be Lawful? I find that many not only of the more Ignorant, & Common Professors of Christianity, but some very Learned men among them, have Inclined to the Negative in the Question proposed. So did some of the Ancients, particularly Tertullian, Origen, Clemens Alexandrinus, and the Author of the Questions and Answers to the Orthodox, which passeth under the Name of Justin Martyr. Like-wise Eusebius relates, that when St. Biblis was put upon the Rack to make her Confess, that Christians were wont to Eat Infants (for so had the Accuser of the Brethren made the Heathen Believe) she Replied, How should they Eat Children, when they Abstain from all Eating of Blood? Also, in the Book of Canons falsely pretended to be the Apostles, the Sixty Third Canon declares, that If any one in Holy Orders, Eateth Blood, he shall be Degraded, but if he be a Lay man, he shall be Excommunicated. Moreover, some Old Councils have condemned it, as Unlawful: And some Emperors have by very severe Laws, Inhibited all Blood-Eating. The most Remarkable is that Ordinance of the Emperor Leo, Surnamed the Philosopher A D. 886. He says, that He had received Information▪ that there were some, who stuffed Blood into Guts, or in Bags, and did Eat ⟨p. 2⟩the same, as usual Meat: He does therefore Command that no Person should dare so to Practice himself▪ or to Sell such things to others; declaring that both Buyer and Seller, shall have all his Goods forfeited, his Head Shaven, and himself sent into Perpetual Banishment. It is further True, that the Christian Greeks, the Russians, Abyssines, Maronites, have abstained from the Eating of Blood, as unlawful. Nor are those Christians free from far greater Superstition than this Some late Authors have Written against it: So Grotius and Curcedaeus in his Treatise De Usu Sanguinis; Dr. Du Veil, in his Commentary on