wounds, woes, deaths procured! Say, ye immortals, slain by fire and sword! Have you forgot your violent passage to eternity? Can seraphs count your numbers!-speak your sorrows!-calculate your pains? Can HE who "weighs the mountains," weigh the worlds of grief! sustained by myriads massacred in war ? "Silence in heaven there was !"-and needs must be ;

Such queries solv'd not by infinity!

66

"

Shall christians then assist the prince of hell, who was a murtherer from the beginning," by telling the world "the benefit of war? Shall protestant publications proclaim to the nations, that War is a blessing of providence? Shall "sons of peace "turn advocates for offensive hostilities, by asserting that "WAR is preferable to PEACE?" Tell it not in Gath! publish it not in the streets of Afkelon! left uncircumcifed heathens blafpheme "the prince of peace," because of the contrast in his peacelefs professors. O cease ye reformed! to contradict by your conduct a CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. Let Papist aggreffors have the honour and glory of pleading for, and practising men-killing Crusades !

O cruel war! O cruel sin! O cruel crowned heads! Who slaughter their subjects by thousands for inanimate dust! When ONE immortal far outweighs in value, worlds of transitory wealth! Surely, mighty men, says king Solomon, shall be mightily tormented!

Arminian Mag. Dec. 1781 p. 658.

SAMUEL JOHNSON, L. L. D.

It is wonderful with what coolness and indifference the greater part of mankind see war commenced. Those that hear of it at a distance, or read of it in books, but have never presented its evils to their minds, consider it as little more than a splendid game, a proclamation, an army, a battle and a triumph. Some indeed must perish in the most successful field but THEY DIE UPON THE BED OF HONOUR, resign their lives amidst the joys of conquest, and, filled with England's glory, smile in death!!

The life of a modern soldier is ill represented by heroic fiction. War has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and the sword. Of the thousands and ten thousands that perished in our late contests with France and Spain, a very small part ever felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless; gasping and groaning, unpitied among men, made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless misery; and were at last whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without notice and without remembrance. By incommodious encampments and unwholesome stations, where courage is useless and enterprize impracticable, fleets are silently dispeopled, and armies sluggishly melted away. Thus is a people gradually exhausted, for

the

the most part with little effect. The wars of civilized nations make very slow changes in the system of empire.* The public perceive scarcely any alteration but an increase of debt; and the few individuals who are benefitted, are not supposed to have the clearest right to their advantages. If he that shared the danger enjoyed the profit, and after bleeding in the battle grew rich by the victory, he might shew his gains without envy. But at the conclusion of a ten years war, how are we recompensed for the death of multitudes and the expence of millions, but by contemplating the sudden glories of paymasters and agents, contractors and commissaries, whose equipages shine like meteors, and whose palaces rise like exhalations.

THESE are the men who, without virtue, labour, or hazard, are growing rich as their country is impoverished; they rejoice when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to the slaughter and devastation; and laugh from their desks at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cypher to cypher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or tempest. Faukland Islands.

WH

REF. J. BRADLEY RHŶS.

HEN we lift our arm to plunge a dagger in a human breast, even in our defence, why does

the

*This fentence accords but ill with what follows; or with the

évents of the last twenty years.

the hand tremble? Why shudders the heart? whence that fill small voice within-that sometimes (even in the tempest and whirlwind of passion) pleads for non-resistance? Is it not the voice of power, under whose inspiration the apostle thus addressed those to whom he wrote dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves; for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay faith the Lord, (Heb. x. 30.) Why do men, who have been the cause of other's death, so often make excuse for their conduct, why are there so many arguments urged to justify such acts-and why cannot men avoid recalling them to mind continually? It is not so with truth; that needs no apology: the practice of it leaves no anxiety on the mind. No doubts arise in the seasons of retirements, to lessen the satisfaction we enjoy from the conscientious performance of what we know to be right.--Truth will ever approve itself the parent of quietness, silence, and peace. Until we have experienced, in our own hearts, that love which worketh no ill to his neighbour, and which is the fulfilling of the law that we are ready to forgive and pray for, even our most inveterate enemies-until the divine fpirit witneffeth with our Spirit that we may in some degree consider ourselves as fons of that God, who by the apostle, is emphatically stiled love, (i. John iv. 16.)-We know but little-we know nothing of practical christianity, that religion which is pure and undefiled in the fight of our heavenly Father. (James i. 27.)

What

What arguments can possibly be urged, that will prove to the satisfaction of the most illiterate man, who is endued with common sense, that he may, at the command of any human power, do that with innocence, which, were he to commit as an individual, he should consider as loading himself with guilt; or that under any sanction, he can be authorised in the violation of the divine law? What can possibly justify that man in bearing arms for the extermination even of his most inveterate foe, who professes a religion, which forbids him to go to law for his just rights, and requires him rather to suffer wrong to permit himself to be defrauded, than to return evil for evil, or engage in contention and strife? What expectation can a christian entertain (however apparently just the cause in which he is engaged) of passing from a scene of devastation and carnage, in which he has willingly taken a part, to the realms of everlasting peace?

This opinion, that war is unlawful to christians, is not either a new or a singular opinion*; from the time in which it began to be preached by the apostles at Jerusalem, it has never been left without witness in any age from that to the present.

For men of the most eminent abilities and extensive erudition, have never yet, nor ever will produce arguments sufficient to prove that the profession of a soldier, is consistent with the profession of christianity, or to remove the * See Jortin's Charge IV. Vol. vii. p. 434.

scruples