Environmental historian Keith Thomas shows how Puritans in England were at the forefront of the movement to end cruelty to animals in the early seventeenth century. Drawing on Calvin’s own caution that when God placed the beasts “in subjection unto us, he did it with the condition that we should handle them gently,” Puritans like Philip Stubbes spoke out against malicious animal sports, including cock-fighting and bearbaiting.45 What Christian heart can take pleasure to see one poor beast to rent, tear and kill another? . . . Although they be bloody beasts to mankind and seek his destruction .
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