Wesley Corpus

They do not so much as know them. But a man, who is King of France, has a quarrel with another man, who is King of England. So these Frenchmen are to kill as many of these Englishmen as they can, to prove the King of France is in the right. Now, what an argument is this l What a method of proof! What an amazing way of deciding con troversies ! What must mankind be, before such a thing as war could ever be known or thought of upon earth? How shocking, how inconceivable a want must there have been of common understanding, as well as common humanity, before any two Governors, or any two nations in the universe, could once think of such a method of decision ? If, then, all na tions, Pagan, Mahometan, and Christian, do, in fact, make this their last resort, what farther proof do we need of the utter degeneracy of all nations from the plainest principles of reason and virtue P of the absolute want, both of common sense and common humanity, which runs through the whole race of mankind? In how just and strong a light is this placed by the writer cited before l--“I gave him a description of cannons, muskets, pistols, swords, bayonets; of sieges, attacks, mines, countermines, bombardments; of engagements by sea and land; ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the air; smoke, noise, trampling to death under horses’ feet, flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and beasts of prey; and, farther, of plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying. I assured him, I had seen a hundred enemies blown up at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators.” Is it not astonishing, beyond all expression, that this is the naked truth? that, within a short term of years, this has been the real case in almost every part of even the Christian world?