As I am writing an article on this subject for the REFORMER of October 15 (A. and H. B. Bonner, Took’s Court, E.C.), I need not trespass further on the MESSENGER’S limited space, except to thank Professor Mayor for his prompt and courteous explanation of his speech at Ramsgate. None would dream of charging Professor Mayor, whose kindly tolerance is as well-known as his learning, with having “fanned the flames of sectarian life.” Nor, I need hardly say, do I the least object to “gathering evidence for our practice from all quarters,” the Bible included, when there is real evidence to gather, for it would be insane to “taboo” any literature that tells in favour of our cause. My protest is simply against the arbitrary appeal to Bible texts as contain some special authority, and the consequent tendency to wrest these texts from their true significance in order to make a show of Biblical sanction. Individual vegetarians who regard this sanction as indispensable have every right to propagate their own belief, but not, I submit, to associate the vegetarian movement therewith, any more than it would be allowable for freethinkers, when speaking from a vegetarian platform, to couple vegetarianism with free thought.
The Vegetarian Messenger, October 1897