Humanity Against Cruelty to Animals in Historical Literature, Timeline of Animal Rights History

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1761 | Clemency to Brutes

Cruelty towards Men is most confessedly an Offence against god, and can the same Disposition towards Brutes be otherwise? Did not the same Hand which made Them make Us ? Are they not formed with equal Thought and Accuracy ? Are they not, considering the difference of their Natures, as bountifully provided for ? Have they not impressed on them as vehement a Desire of continuing their Kinds? Appear they not, even the vilest of them, alike desirous of Life: Do they not, when bruised or wounded, or otherwise evil-treated, seem equally sensible of Pain ?—Yes, considered in all these respects, the very meanest Worm is our Sister. (Clemency to Brutes, Sermons Preached on Shrove-Sunday [1761])

Thus doth God address himself to his Human Creatures in Favour of the inferiour Kinds, by causing these, when pained or murdered, to excite in them a variety of Sensations to which he hath implanted an Aversion in their Nature. Which if we well reflect upon, together with the Consideration before mentioned, we shall not so much wonder when we read that there were many wise and religious Men among the Ancients who held it a Duty to abstain entirely from eating the Flesh of all manner of living Creatures, and not to put any among the harmless Kinds of them to Death upon any Account whatsoever; we shall not so much wonder when we are told that there are at this Day Countries wherein public hospitals are erected for the relief and subsistence of maimed and aged Brute; nor that there are People in the World so very Compassionate as to part with a Sum of Money to a merciless European to restore its Liberty a poor Bird: For such People in the East there really are, and others who make it a matter of Religion not to take away Life knowingly from any Creature whatever, nay who make it a matter of Religion not to walk abroad before Day, lest by chance they should tread upon some wandring Insect, or maim it in the movement of their Feet. (Clemency to Brutes, Sermons Preached on Shrove-Sunday [1761])

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1761 | Clemency to Brutes…Sermons preached on a Shrove-Sunday…to Dissuade from that Species of Cruelty Annually Practiced in England, the Throwing at Cocks. (London, 1761; Online at Animal Rights History, 2003).