Look at that which the private Christian is to do to his neighbour, or his enemy, and you see that very thing, which one Christian kingdom is to do to another.
Now suppose a man, redeemed from his fallen nature, by Christ formed in his soul, and then he can no more be hired to kill men gloriously in the field, than to carry a dark lanthorn by night to a _powder-plot_.
The temporal miseries which war carries along with it, wherever it goes, are neither to be numbered nor expressed. What thievery bears any proportion to that, which with the boldness of drum and trumpet, plunders the innocent of all that they have? And if themselves are left alive, with all their limbs, or their daughters unravished, they have many times, only the ashes of their consumed houses to lie down upon. What honour has war not gotten, from its tens and tens of hundreds of thousands of men slaughtered on heaps, with as little regret or concern, as at loads of rubbish thrown into a pit? Who, but the fiery dragon, would put wreaths of laurel, on such heroes heads? Who but he, could say unto them, _Well done, good and faithful servants_?
But there is still an evil of war much greater, though less regarded. Who reflects, how many hundreds of thousands, nay millions of _young men_, born into this world for no other end, but that they may be born again, and from sons of _Adam_’s misery, become sons of God, and fellow-heirs with Christ in everlasting glory; who reflects, I say, what nameless numbers of these, are robbed of God’s precious gift of life, before they have known the sole benefit of living; who are not suffered to stay in this world, till age and experience have done their best for them, have helped them to know the inward voice of God’s Spirit, helped them to find, and feel that curse, and sting of sin and death, which must be taken from within them, before they can die the death of the righteous; but instead of this, have been either forced, or tempted in the fire of youth, and full of strength of sinful lusts, to forget God, eternity, and their own souls, and rush into a kill or be killed, with as much furious haste, and goodness of spirit, as _tiger_ kills _tiger_ for the sake of his prey?
That God’s providence over his fallen creatures, is a providence of love and salvation, turning through ways of infinite wisdom, sooner or later, all kinds of evil into _good_, making that which was lost to be found, that which was dead, to be alive again; not willing that one single sinner should want that, which can save him from eternal death, is a truth as certain, as that God’s name is, I AM that I AM.
Amongst the unfallen creatures in heaven, God’s name and nature, is LOVE, LIGHT, and GLORY. To the fallen sons of _Adam_, that which was _love_, _light_, and _glory_ in heaven, becomes infinite PITY and COMPASSION on earth, in a God, cloathed with the nature of his fallen creature, bearing all its infirmities, entering into all its troubles, and in meek innocence, living a life, and dying a death, of all the sufferings due to sin. Hence it was, that when this DIVINE PITY suffered its own life-giving blood to be poured on the ground, all outward nature made full declaration of its atoning, and redeeming power; the strength of the earth did quake, the hardness of rocks was forced to split, and long-covered graves to give up their dead. A certain presage, that all kinds of hellish _wrath_, _malice_, _pride_, _envy_, and earthly _passions_, which kept men under the power of Satan, must have the fullness of death, from that all powerful, all purifying blood of the Lamb, which will never cease washing RED into white, till all the sons of _Adam_ are fit for their several mansions in their heavenly Father’s house.
Sing, O ye heavens, and shout all the lower parts of the earth, for this is OUR GOD that varies not, whose first creating love knows no change, but into a _redeeming pity_ towards all his fallen creatures.