The rope and

but in a more ignominious manner. the gibbet is to be his portion; die he must; and what honour a man wins or saves, by that which gives him an opportunity of being hanged, is hard to be understood; but he that mistakes the cart for a triumphal chariot, or the gallow-tree for a triumphal arch, may apply himself to the obtaining such victories as these.

(2.) But secondly, suppose that he escapes by flight; yet then he quits his country, and lives a banished man, and like Cain, having murdered his brother, he presently betakes himself to wander about the world, leaving behind him the confiscation of his goods, a family lamenting, and perhaps starving; and some of them peradventure dying for grief, and so feeling the murderous influence of his action as really, though not in the same manner, as his slain adversary.

Surely these will be sad accidents to a man in cold blood, when the fury of his passion, which abused his reason, and represented revenge so pleasant, shall be over, and transmit the thing naked to his recovered judgment, to be considered according to its real aspect and all its sharp events.

By this time, undoubtedly, he will see how much better it had been for him to have kept himself quiet and innocent in the peaceable enjoyment of his friends, his estate, and country; than to wander as an indigent murderer in a strange land, from whence the sense of his guilt, the severity of the laws, and the exasperation of the murdered person's friends, ready to prosecute those laws against him, continually terrify him from all thoughts of a return.

(3.) But, in the third and last place, we will suppose the man to have better fortune: that he has fought and killed his adversary, and so satisfied his revenge; and moreover, that through the intercession of great friends, willing to share his guilt, and to derive some of the blood upon their own heads, he has not by flight escaped, but by a full acquitment outbraved justice, and triumphed over the law, and so stands secure as to all temporal retribution. But still, after all this, may we not ask concerning such an one, is all well within? How fares it with him in the court of conscience? Is he able to keep off the grim arrests of that? Can he drown the cry of blood, and bribe his own thoughts to let him alone? Can he fray off the vulture from his breast, that night and day is gnawing his heart, and wounding it with ghastly and amazing reflections?

Whether it is, that God has done it for the defence of men's lives, or whether it is the unnaturalness of the sin, or whatsoever else may be the cause, certain it is, that there is nothing which dogs the conscience so incessantly, fastens upon it so closely, and tears it so furiously, as the dismal sense of blood-guiltiness.

The man perhaps endeavours to be merry, he goes about his business, he enjoys his cups and his jolly company and possibly, if he fought for revenge, he is applauded and admired by some; if he fought for a mistress, he is smiled upon for a day. But when, in the midst of all his gaieties, his conscience shall come and round him in the ear: Sir, you are to remember that you have murdered a man, and what is more, you have murdered a soul; you have sacrificed an immortal nature, the image

of God, and the price of Christ's blood, to a pique, a punctilio, to the loves of a pitiful creature, lighter than vanity, and emptier than the air: and these are the worthy causes for which your brother now lies in the regions of darkness and misery, without relief, without recovery; an eternal sacrifice to a short passion, a rash anger, and a sudden revenge.

Now when these reasonings shall be joined with the considerations of the divine justice, and the retributions that Heaven reserves for blood; these sad reckonings, that are in store for the successful acquitted murderer: believe it, where these thoughts shall lay hold of the conscience, they will leave their marks behind them.

But if the man feels none of these stings or remorses, his condition is infinitely worse: he is sealed up under a spirit of searedness, and reprobation, and an invincible curse. And it is a sign that God intends him not the grace of repentance, perhaps for denying his brother the opportunities of it, by a sudden death; and sending him out of the world in such a condition, that it were ten thousand times better for himself never to have come into the world, than that he should leave it under the like.

I have nothing more to say concerning such a person, but that his sin has put him into such an estate, that, living or dying, he is unavoidably miserable.

SERMON XLIX.

ROMANS xii. 18.

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

You may remember that the second particular laid down for the prosecution of these words, was to assign the measures and proportions by which the duty of living peaceably was to be determined: which I shewed were contained within the bounds of lawful.

In my inquiries into which, I undertook the resolution of several cases. As, concerning the lawfulness of war; of keeping or breaking the peace with the magistrate; as also of duels. All which I have already finished; so that there remain only two more to be discussed. One of which is,

Whether it be lawful to repel force by force, so as to kill another in one's own defence?

The matter of which question is very different from that about duels. For a duel is a fight freely and voluntarily undertook by the offer of one party, and the acceptance of the other. But this is a sudden, a violent, and unforeseen assault, in respect of him that is assaulted: who thereupon enters not into combat upon any precedent choice or deliberate appointment; but upon the sudden alarms of force and necessity, and the compulsions of an extreme danger.

In which condition we are to suppose the man cut off from all possibility of flying, shut up from all succour by a rescue, or remedy by the law; but drove into those straits, both of place, time, and all other circumstances, that all evasion is rendered desperate and impossible, but through the blood of his adversary.

In this case I affirm it to be lawful for a man to save himself by destroying his enemy, and that upon these two reasons.

1. The first taken from that which we have already insisted upon; the great natural right of selfpreservation: which right is as full in particular persons as in public bodies. It is the very firstborn of all the rudiments of nature; and the very ground and reason of its actions; not instilled by precept, but suggested by instinct. A man is no more instructed to this, than he is to be an hungry or thirsty, when nature wants its due refection. And that as to this particular the rights of nature are not abridged by Christian religion, will appear from the

Second argument, taken from that place where Christ commands his disciples to provide themselves swords: but to have allowed them the instruments of defence, and at the same time to have forbid the use of them as unlawful, had been highly irrational. I suppose Christ did not command those poor fishermen to wear swords for ornament only, as men do nowadays; but that he might countenance them in the management of their own preservation, amidst those many unjust violences and assaults, that were likely enough to attend men odious to the world for the promulgation of severe truths.