for it is a maxim in the civil law, id possumus quod jure possumus; which was the sense of Joseph's answer to his mistress, in Genesis xxxix. 9, How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God? and of that of the apostle, 2 Corinth. xiii. 8, We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth. In both which places, not the possibility, but the lawfulness of the action is specified; and that is the sense here intended.

But now the observance of peace being limited by the measure of lawful, it follows, that where the breaking of the peace is not unlawful, there the maintaining of it ceases to be a necessary duty. It is of some moment therefore to satisfy ourselves when it is lawful, and when unlawful to break the peace. And all inquiries concerning this are reducible to these two.

1. Whether it can at all be lawful.

2. Supposing that it may be lawful, when and where it ought to be judged so.

Under the first of these I shall discuss that great question, whether war can be lawful for Christians. Under the second, I shall shew those general grounds that may authorize a war, and from thence descend to the resolution of particular cases.

As,

1. Whether it can be lawful to break peace with the magistrate.

2. Whether it may be lawful for one private man to make war upon another, in those encounters which we commonly call duels.

3. Whether it be lawful for a man to repel force with force, so as to kill another in his own defence. 4. And lastly, since the prosecution of another in courts of judicature is in its kind a breach of the

mutual bond of peace, I shall inquire whether it be allowable for Christians to go to law one with another.

All these things admit of much doubt and dispute; and yet, being matters of common and daily occurrence, it concerns us to have a right judgment of them.

I shall begin with the first question, which is concerning the lawfulness of war; in order to the resolution of which, I shall premise what it is. War may be properly defined, a state of hostility, or mutual acts of annoyance, either for the preservation of the public from some mischief intended, or in the vindication of it for some mischief already done to it.

The ground of war therefore is some public hurt or mischief; and since this may be twofold, either intended or actually done, there are accordingly two distinct kinds of war, defensive or offensive.

1. Defensive is in order to keep off and repel an evil designed to the public; and therefore is properly an act of self-preservation.

2. Offensive is for the revenging a public injury done to a community, and so is properly an act of justice.

It is clear therefore, that the lawfulness and justness of war is founded upon the justness of its cause; and this being once found out, and rightly stated, I affirm, that it is allowable before God to cease from peace, and to enter into a state of war; and that upon the strength of these arguments:

(1.) That which is a genuine, natural, and necessary consequent derived from one of the chief principles of the law of nature, that is lawful: but

so is war, namely, from the principles of self-preservation, the noblest and the most acknowledged of all those principles, by which nature regulates and governs the actions of the creature. Hoc et ratio doctis, necessitas barbaris, feris natura ipsa præscripsit, ut omnem semper vim, quacunque ope possint, a corpore, a capite, a vita sua propulsarent. Cicero, in his defence of Milo. And that self-preservation cannot be maintained without war is too evident to be proved. The Jews, when they were set upon by their enemies on the sabbath day, and then murdered and massacred, because they thought it unlawful to make any resistance, or to defend themselves on that day, have transmitted the sad truth of this assertion in bloody letters to posterity.

That men will sometimes invade the rights and the lives of others is certain; and it is also as certain, that the naked breast is not the surest armour, nor patience the best weapon of defence.

Do we expect a rescue from heaven? and that God should send down fire from the clouds, and work miracles for our preservation? Experience sufficiently convinces us that such an expectation is vain. God delivers men by means, when means are to be had, and by the interposal of their own endeavours and therefore he that flies to the church when he should be in the field, and takes his prayerbook in his hand when he should take his sword, tempts God, and loses himself; and, according to a due estimate of things, becomes a murderer, by so patiently suffering another to be so.

Victrix patientia is a puff and a metaphor; and may, perhaps, in the issue of things, bear a man

through a domestic injury or a private affront; but I never read that it put an army to flight, or rebated the courage or controlled the invasion of a fighting

enemy.

Besides, patience is properly the suffering quietly, when God in his providence calls us to suffer: but it is not a suffering, when God calls us to act, and to stand upon our own defence. As in some men we see it usual to veil their cowardice and pusillanimity with the names of prudence and moderation; so that, which some call patience, will be once found nothing else but a lazy relinquishment of the rights and privileges of their nature; and that a life and a being was much cast away upon such as would not exert the utmost power they had to defend it. This argument is properly for defensive war.

(2.) The second is for offensive; and it proceeds thus: That which is a proper act of distributive justice is lawful; but such a thing is war, it being a retribution of punishment for a public hurt or injury done by one nation to another. That he who does a wrong should suffer for it, is a thing required by justice, the execution of which is committed to the supreme power of every nation: and why justice may not be done upon a company of malefactors defending themselves with arms, as well as upon any particular thief or murderer, brought shackled and disarmed to the block or the gallows, I cannot understand.

The case in a civil war is clear between a magistrate assisted by his subjects, against another rebel part of his subjects: for he being the supreme power, the right of punishing offenders, whether single or in companies, is undoubtedly in him. But since to

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punish is properly an act of a superior to an inferior, and two kingdoms or nations seem to be equal, and neither to have any superiority or jurisdiction over the other, it may be doubted, how the one's making war upon the other can be properly an act of punitive justice.

To this I answer, that though these two kingdoms or states be in themselves equal, yet the injury received gives the injured people` a right of claiming a reparation from those that did the injury; and consequently, in that respect, gives them a kind of superiority over the other. For, in point of right, still the injured person is superior: and the reason is, because common justice is concerned in his behalf; to whose rules all nations in the world owe a real subjection.

If it were not for war, therefore, there could be no provision made of doing justice upon an offending nation; justice would only prey upon particular persons; but national robberies, national murders, must pass in triumph with the reputation of virtues, as high and great actions, above the control of those common rules that govern the particular members of societies.

In a word, society could not consist, if it were not lawful for one nation to exact a compensation for the injuries done to it by another; and upon the refusal of such compensation, to endeavour it by force and acts of hostility. Wherefore I conclude, that war must needs be just, when the instrument of its management is the sword of justice. And this argument is for offensive war.

But before I dismiss it, there is one doubt that may require resolution, and it is this; that admitting