ness of our life, and in which we ought to take most delight, is the issue of peace. War breaks all that order, interrupts all that devotion, and even extinguishes all that zeal, which peace had kindled in us; lays waste the dwelling-place of God as well as of man; and introduces and propagates opinions and practice as much against heaven as against earth, and erects a deity that delights in nothing but cruelty and blood. Are we pleased with the enlarged commerce and society of large and opulent cities, or with the retired pleasures of the country? Do we love stately palaces, and noble houses, or take delight in pleasant groves and woods, or fruitful gardens, which teach and instruct Nature to produce and bring forth more fruit, and flowers, and plants, than her own store can supply her with? All this we owe to peace, and the dissolution of this peace disfigures all this beauty, and in a short time covers and buries all this order and delight in ruin and rubbish. Finally, have we any content, satisfac

tion, and joy, in the conversation of each other, in the knowledge and understanding of those arts and sciences, which more adorn mankind than all those buildings and plantations do the fields and grounds on which they stand? Even this is the blessed effect and legacy of peace; and war lays our natures and manners as waste as our gardens and our habitations; and we can as easily preserve the beauty of the one as the integrity of the other, under the cursed jurisdiction of drums and trumpets.

"If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men," was one of the primitive injunctions of Christianity, and comprehends not only particular and private men, (though no doubt all gentle and peaceable nations are most capable of Christian precepts, and most affected with them,) but kings and princes themselves. St Paul knew well that the peaceable inclinations and dispositions of subjects could do little good, if the sovereign princes were disposed to war; but if they desire to live peaceably with their neighbours, their

subjects cannot but be happy. And the pleasure that God himself takes in that temper needs no other manifestation than the promise our Savior makes to those who contribute towards it, in his Sermon upon the Mount. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." Peace must needs be very acceptable to him, when the instruments towards it are crowned with such a full measure of blessing; and it is no hard matter to guess whose children they are, who take all the pains they can to deprive the world of peace, and to subject it to the rage and fury and desolation of war. If we had not the woful experience of so many hundred years, we should hardly think it possible that men who pretend to embrace the gospel of peace, should be so unconcerned in the obligation and effects of it; and when God looks upon it as the greatest blessing he can pour down upon the heads of those who please him best and observe his commands, "I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none

shall make you afraid," that men study nothing more than how to throw off and deprive themselves and others of this his precious bounty; as if we were void of all natural reason, as well as without the elements of religion; for nature itself disposes us to a love of society, which cannot be preserved without peace. A whole city on fire is a spectacle full of horror, but a whole kingdom on fire must be a prospect much more terrible; and such is every kingdom in war, where nothing flourishes but rapine, blood, and murder, and the faces of all men are pale and ghastly, out of the sense of what they have done, or of what they have suffered, or are to endure. The reverse of all this is peace, which in a moment extinguishes all that fire, binds up all the wounds, and restores to all faces their natural vivacity and beauty. We cannot make a more lively representation and emblem to ourselves of hell, than by the view of a kingdom in war; where

there is nothing to be seen but destruction and fire, and the discord itself is a great part of the torment; nor a more sensible reflection upon the joys of heaven, than as it is all quiet and peace, and where nothing is to be discerned but consent and harmony, and what is amiable in all the circumstances of it. And, as far as we may warrantably judge of the inhabitants of either climate, they who love and cherish discord among men, and take delight in war, have large mansions provided for them in that region of faction and disagreement; so we may presume, that they who set their hearts upon peace in this world, and labor to promote it in their several stations amongst all men, and who are are instruments to prevent the breach of it amongst princes and States, or to renew it when it is broken, have an infallible title to a place and mansion in heaven; where there is only peace in that perfection that all other blessings are comprehended in it, and a part of it.-Clarendon.