Publications

Metcalfe, William. (1840). Bible Testimony, on Abstinence from the Flesh of Animals as Food. Philadelphia: J. Metcalfe & Co.

Excerpt from Bible Testimony, on Abstinence From the Flesh of Animals as Food: Being an Address Delivered in the Bible-Christian Church, North Third Street, West Kensington, on the Eighth of June 1840, Being the Chruch’s Anniversary.  This is said to be the first book on vegetarianism published in the United States and the earliest English-language document seen that uses the term “animal flesh” to refer to meat.

As a religious community, we have adopted a mode of life in regulating appetites and fulfilling the physical and organic laws of the body, altogether different from the practices of other Christian professors. We have long discontinued the very fashionable habit of feeding on the flesh of butchered animals and have confined ourselves wholly to vegetable productions. We have long resisted the allurements of the intoxicating beverages and have been contented to satisfy our thirst from the limpid stream. The system of temperance, which we thus religiously practice, furnishes us with strength and activity sufficient to support the most laborious occupations.  It secures one of the all-important blessings of life, the possession of health, and qualifies us for the enjoyment of a more perfect mode of being and intellectual delights than ever fall to the participation of the alcoholic or the glutton.

Metcalfe, William. (1872). Out of the Clouds: into the Light. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott & Co.

This book was put together by Rev. Metcalfe’s son, Rev. Joseph Metcalfe, of his father’s work.  It begins with a memoir of Rev. William Metcalfe and his journey.  It also includes seventeen discourses on the Reading Doctrines of the Day, in the Light of Bible Christianity. (on the being, and unity of God, on the Lord Jesus Christ, on the Trinity, the Bible, a divine revelation, on creation, on the original state of man, on the popular doctrine of original sin, on the garden of Eden and its trees, on the forbidden fruit and the tempter, Bible testimony on abstinence from the flesh of animals as food, on the sacrifices of the Jews, on the 10 Commandments, on the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the divine nature of his resurrection, on the passion of the cross, on faith, the sermon delivered on the 50th anniversary of ordination, and a historical sketch of the Bible Christian church).