*The Creator designed that the appetite should be man’s servant, not his master.
*It was to be subordinate to the moral and intellectual faculties.
This truth is seen in God’s first prohibitory declaration to man: Genesis 2:16 Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it; for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.
God made man upright, and endowed him with powers of mind far above those of any other creature living upon the earth.
He placed him upon probation, that he might form a character for the glory of the Creator, and for his own happiness.
The first great moral lesson which the innocent pair of Eden were to learn, was self-control.
God appeals to man’s nobler powers. He graciously gives him all he needs for the delights of taste, and for the support of life.
And it was for man’s moral good, to say the least, that his eating from the tree of knowledge was prohibited.
Of all the trees of the garden he might freely eat, save one.
In this prohibition, the Creator places the appetite under the watchcare and guardianship of the moral and intellectual powers.
Man alone is responsible for the moral and physical wretchedness under which the race suffers. There was no necessity for Eve to yield to the tempter; and Adam is quite as inexcusable."
James White