2 they are not so much as angry. The grammarians have too much reason to derive bellum, a belluis.1 All war hath much of the beast in it-immane quiddam et belluarum simile. Very much of the man must be put off that there may be enough of the beast. Princes must be obeyed, and because they may have just cause of war, their subjects must obey and serve them in it without taking upon them to examine whether it be just or no. Servi tua est conditio, ratio ad te nihil;3 they have no liberty to doubt when their duty is clear to obey, but where there is none of that obligation it is wonderful and an unnatural appetite that disposes men to be soldiers that they may know how to live, as if the understanding the advantage how to kill most men together were a commendable science to raise their fortune; and what reputation soever it may have in politics, it can have none in religion to say that the art and conduct of a soldier is not infused by nature, but by study, experience and observation, and therefore that men are to learn it in order to serve their own prince and country, which may be assaulted and invaded by a skilful enemy and hardly defended by ignorant and unskilful officers; when in truth the man who conscientiously weighs this common argument will find that it is made by appetite to excuse, and not by reason to support, an ill custom, since the guilt contracted by shedding the blood of one single innocent man is too dear a price to pay for all the skill that is to be learned in that devouring profession, and that all the science that is necessary for a just defense may be attained without contracting a guilt which is like to make the War from a word meaning wild beast. 2 Something monstrous and partaking of the beast. 3 Your condition is that of a slave, you have nothing to do with reasons. defense the more difficult. And we have instances enough of the most brave and effectual defenses made upon the advantage of innocence against the boldest, skilful and injurious aggressor, whose guilt often makes his understanding too weak to go through an unjust attempt against a resolute though less experienced defender. It must be strange to anyone who considers that Christian religion, that is founded upon love and charity and humility, should not only not extinguish this unruly appetite to war, but make the prosecution of it the more fierce and cruel, there having scarce been so much rage and inhumanity practiced in any war as in that between Christians. The ancient Romans, who for some ages arrived at the greatest perfection in the observation of the obligations of honor, justice, and humanity of all men who had no light from religion, instituted a particular triumph for those their generals who returned with victory without the slaughter of men. It were to be wished that the modern Christian Romans were endued with the same blessed spirit, and that they believed that the voice of blood is loud and importunate; they would not then think it their office and duty so far to kindle this firebrand, war, and to nourish all occasions to inflame it, as to obstruct and divert all overtures of extinguishing it, and to curse and excommunicate all those who shall consent or submit to such overtures when they are wearied, tired, and even consumed with weltering in each other's blood and have scarce blood enough left to give them strentgh to enjoy the blessings of peace. What can be more unmerciful, more unworthy of the title of Christians, than such an aversion from stopping those issues of blood and from binding up those wounds which have been bleeding so long? And yet we have seen those inhuman bulls let loose by two popes, who would be thought to have the sole power committed to them by Christ to inform the world of his will and pleasure: the one against the peace with Germany, and the other against that with the Low Countries, by both which these his Vicars General absolve all men from observing it though they are bound by their oaths never to swerve from it. We may piously believe that all the princes of the world who have wantonly, or without just and manifest provocation, obliged their subjects to serve them in a war by which millions of men have been exposed to slaughter, fire, and famine, will sooner find remission of all the other sins they have committed than for that obstinate outrage against the life of man and the murders which have been committed by their authority. BIBLIOGRAPHY A list of the first editions of the books from which the foregoing selections were drawn, together with some modern editions of the texts. The edition on which the texts of this selection are based is also indicated. FRANCIS BACON Essayes. Religious Meditations. Places of Perswasion and Disswasion. 1597. (Contained ten essays.)— The Essaies of Sir Francis Bacon Knight, the King's Solliciter Generall. 1612. (Contained thirty-eight essays.) The Essays and Counsels, civill and morall, of Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount St. Alban. Newly enlarged. 1625.-Some modern editions are in the Works, collected and edited by James Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath, 1857; W. Aldis Wright, 1862; E. A. Abbott, 1885; S. H. Reynolds, 1890; A. S. West, 1897; Mary Augusta Scott, New York, 1908. (Wright's text.) SIR WILLIAM CORNWALLIS 1601. Essayes, by Sir William Cornwallis the Younger, Knight. 1600.-A second part of Essayes. Written by Sir William Cornwallis the Younger, Knight. -Other editions, 1606, 1631, 1632.-Discourses upon Seneca the Tragedian, by Sir William Cornwallis the Younger, Knight. 1601; also 1631. (Text from Essays, 1601, and Discourses, 1631.) ROBERT JOHNSON Essaies or Rather Imperfect Offers. 1601. Reprinted as Essays Expressed in Sundry Exquisite Fancies. 1638. (Text of 1638.) JOHN BARCLAY The Mirrour of Mindes: or Barclay's Icon Animorum. Englished, by Thomas May, Esq. 1631; also 1633. The Latin original, Joanni Barclaii Icon Animorum, was published in 1614. (Text of 1633.) LORD CHANDOS OR GILBERT CAVENDISH Horae Subsecivae. Observations and Discourses. 1620. OWEN FELLTHAM Resolves, Divine, Morall and Politicall. (The first century appeared, undated, in 1620. The first complete edition in 1628.) Edited for the Temple Classics by Oliphant Smeaton, 1904. (Text of Fifth Edition, 1634.) BEN JONSON Timber; or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter as they have flowed out of his daily readings; or had their refluxe to his peculiar Notion of the Times. 1641 (in the second volume of the folio edition of the Works). Modern editions by F. E. Schelling, Boston, 1892; M. Castelain, Paris, 1906. Schelling's text.) FYNES MORYSON An Itinerary Containing his ten years' Travell through the Twelve Dominions of Germany, Bohmer |