Now what is the difference between the haughty duellist with his provided second, meeting his adversary with sword and pistol behind a hedge or a house, and two kingdoms with their high spirited regiments, slaughtering one another in the field of battle? It is the difference that is between the murder of one man, and the murder of an hundred thousand!

Now imagine the duellist fasting and confessing his sins to GOD to-day, because he is engaged to fight his brother to-morrow; fancy again the conqueror got into his closet, on his bended knees, lifting up his hands and heart to God, for blessing his weapons with the death of his brother; and then you have a picture in little, of the great piety, that begins and ends the wars all over heavenly christendom.

What blindness can well be greater, than to think that a christian kingdom as such can have any other goodness, or union with Christ, but that very goodness, which makes the private christian to be one with him, and a partaker of the divine nature? Or that pride, wrath, ambition, envy, covetousness, rapinė, resentment, revenge, hatred, mischief and murder, are only the works of the devil, whilst they are committed by private or single men ; but when carried on by all the strength and authority, all the hearts, hands, voices of a whole nation, that the devil is then quite driven out of them, loses all his right and power in them, and they become holy matter of church thanksgiving, and the sacred oratory of pulpits.

B3

The temporal miseries and wrongs, which war carries along with it, wherever it goes, are neither to be numbered nor expressed. What thievery bears any proportion to that, which with the boldness of drum and trumpet, plunders the innocent of all that they have? And if themselves are left alive, with all their limbs, or their daughters unravished, they have many times only the ashes of their consumed houses to lie down upon. What honor has war not gotten, for its tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and MILLIONS of men slaughtered on heaps, with as little regret or concern, as at loads of rubbish thrown into a pit?-Who but the fiery dragon, would put wreaths of laurel on such heroes heads? Who but he could say unto them,Well done good and faithful servants!

But there is still an evil of war much greater though less regarded.-Who reflects, how ma ny hundreds of thousands, nay millions of young men, born into this world for no other end, but that they may be born again of Christ, and from sons of Adam's misery, become sons of God, and fellow heirs with Christ in everlasting glory; who reflects, I say, what nameless numbers of these, are robbed of God's precious gift of life to them, before they have known the one sole benefit of living; who are not suffered to stay in this world, till age and experience have done their best for them, have helped them to know the inward voice and operation of God's spirit, helped them to find, and feel the evil, curse, and

sting of sin and death, which must be taken from within them, before they can die the death of the righteous; but instead of all this, have been either violently forced, or tempted in the firè of youth, and full strength of sinful lusts, to forget God, eternity, and their own souls, and rush into a kill or be killed, with as much haste, and goodness of spirit, as tyger kills tyger for the sakė of his prey.

Look now at warring Christendom, what smallest drop of pity towards sinners is to be found in it? Or how could a spirit all hellish, morė fully contrive to hasten their destruction ?—It stirs up and kindles every passion of fallen nature, that is contrary to the all-humble, all-meek, all-loving, all-forgiving, all-saving spirit of Christ. It unites, it drives and compels, nameless numbers of unconverted sinners, to fall murdering and murdered amongst flashes of fire, with the wrath and swiftness of lightning, into a fire infinitely worse than that in which they died!-Oh sad subject for thanksgiving days, whether in popish or protestant churches! For if there is a joy of all the angels in heaven, for one sinner that repenteth, what a joy must there be in hell over such multitudes of sinners not suffered to repent? And if they who have converted many to righteousness, shall shine as the stars in the firmament for ever, what Chorazin's woe may they not justly fear, whose proud wrath and vain glory, have robbed such numberless troops of poor wretches, of all time and place

of

of knowing what righteousness they wanted, for the salvation of their immortal souls.

"For the glory of his Majesty's arms," say Christian kings! Now if at the time, their churches had called a solemn assembly to unite hearts and voices in this pious prayer, “O bles"sed Jesus, dear redeeming Lamb of God, who "camest down from heaven, to save men's lives, "and not to destroy them, go along we humbly

pray thee, with our bomb vessels and fire ships, "suffer not our thundering cannon to rear in "vain, but let thy tender hand of love and mer"cy, direct their balls to more heads and hearts су, "of thine own redeemed creatures, than the "poor skill of man is able of itself to do!”— Had not such prayers had more of the man of the earth, more of the son of perdition in them, than the most christian king's glorying in his arms?

Again, would you farther see the fall of the universal church, from being led by the spirit of Christ, to be guided by the inspiration of the great fiery dragon, look at all European Christendom sailing round the globe, with fire and sword, and every murdering art, to seize the possessions, and kill the inhabitants of both the Indies. What natural right of man, what supernatural virtue which Christ brought down from heaven, was not here trodden under foot?- All that you ever read or heard of heathen barbarity, was here. outdone by christian conquerors. And to this day, what wars of christians against

christians,

christians, blended with scalping heathens, still keep staining the earth and the seas with human blood, for a miserable share in the spoils of a plundered heathen world! A world, which should have heard or seen, or felt nothing from the followers of Christ, but a divine love, that had forced them from distant lands, and through the perils of long seas, to visit strangers with those glad tidings of peace and salvation to all the world, which angels from heaven, and shepherds on earth, proclaimed at the birth of Christ.

But the wisdom of this world hath asked me, how it is possible for Christian kingdoms in the neighbourhood of one another, to preserve them, selves, unless the strength and weapons of war, are every one's defence against such invasions, incroachments and robberies, as would otherwise be the fate of Christian kingdoms from one another?

This question is so far from needing to be answered by me, that it is wholly on my side: it confesses all, and proves all that I have said of the fallen state of Christendom, to be strictly true. For if this is the governing spirit of christian kingdoms, that no one can subsist in safety from its neighbouring christian kingdoms but by its weapons of war, are not all christian kingdoms equally in the same unchristian state, as two neighbouring bloody knaves, who cannot be safe from one another, but as each others murdering arms preserve and protect them? This plea therefore for Christendom's wars, proves

nothing