account of the idolatry connected with it, would have refused it on account of the unlawfulness of fighting. And he who refused it on account of the guilt of fighting, would have refused it on account of the idolatrous services it required. Both and each of them, were impediments in the early times of christianity to a military life.

It may be considered as a well founded proposition, that as the lamp of christianity burned bright in those early times, so those who were illuminated by it declined the military professión; and that as its flame shone less clear, they had less objection to it. Thus, in the two first centuries, when christianity was the purest, there were no christian soldiers. In the third century, when it became less pure, there is frequent mention of such soldiers. And in the fourth, when its corruption was fixt, christians entered upon the profession of arms with as little hesitation as they entered upon any other occupation in life.

That there were no christian soldiers in the first and second centuries has already been made apparent.

That their conduct was greatly altered in the third century, where we are now to view it, we may collect from indisputable authority. A christian soldier was punished for refusing to wear a garland, like the rest of his comrades, on a public occasion. This man, it appears, had been converted in the army, and objected to the ceremony on that account. Now Tertullian tells us that this soldier was blamed for his unseasonable

seasonable zeal, as it was called by some of the christians of that time, though all christians before considered the wearing of such a garland as unlawful and profane. In this century there is no question but the christian discipline began to relax.

That there were christian soldiers in this more corrupt century of the church it is impossible to deny for such frequent mention is made of them in the histories which relate to this period, that we cannot refuse our assent to one or other of the propositions, either that there were men in the armies who called themselves christians, or that there were men in them who had that name given them by others. That they were christians however is another question. They were probably such christians as Dion mentioned to have been among the life guards of Dioclesian and Maximian, and of Constantius and Maximus, of whom Maximilian observed, "These men may. know what is most expedient for them to do; but I am a christian, and therefore I cannot fight."

That christianity was more degenerate in the fourth than in the third century, we have indubitable proof.

.. Almost every body knows that more evils sprung up to the church in this century than in any other; some of which remain at the present day.

Constantine, on his conversion, introduced many of the Pagan superstitions, in which he had been brought up, into the christian religion.

Thus there was a mixture of christianity and

Paganism

Paganism in the church which had never been known before.

Now in this century, when the corruption of the church may be considered to have been fixed, we find the distinction between them and others gradually passing away.

Hence the unlawfulness of fighting began to be given up. We find, however, that here and there an ancient father still retained it as a religious tenet; but these dropping off one after another, it ceased at length to be a doctrine of

the church.

WHEN I consider, says Mr. Clarkson, the frequency of modern wars,-when I consider that they are scarcely over before others rise up in their place ;-when I consider, again, that they come like the common diseases which belong to our infirm nature, and that they are considered by men nearly in a similar light,-I should feel myself criminal, if I were not to avail myself of the privilege of an author, to add a few observations of my own upon this subject.

Living as we do, in an almost inaccessible island, and having therefore more than ordinary means of security to our property and our persons from hostile invasion, we do not seem to be sufficiently grateful to the divine being for the blessings we enjoy. We do not seem to make a right use of our benefits, by contemplating the situation, and by feeling a tender anxiety for the happiness of others. We seem to make no

proper

proper estimates of the miseries of war. The latter we feel principally in abridgements of a pecuniary nature. But if we were to feel them in the conflagration of our towns and villages, or in personal wounds, or in the personal sufferings of fugitive misery and want, we should be apt to put a greater value than we do upon the blessings of peace. And we should be apt to consider the connexion between war and misery, and between war and moral evil, in a light so much stronger than we do at present, that we might even suppose the precepts of Jesus Christ to be deficient, unless they were made to extend to wars as well as to private injuries.

I wonder what a superior being, living in the nearest planet to our earth, and seeing us of the size of ants, would say, if he were enabled to get any insight into the nature of modern wars.

It must certainly strike him, if he were to see a number of such diminutive persons chasing one another in bodies over different parts of the hills and valleys of the earth, and following each other in little nut shells, as it were, upon the ocean, as a very extraordinary sight, and as mysterious, and hard to be explained. But when he saw them stop and fight, and destroy one another, and was assured that they were actually engaged in the folemn game of death, and this at such a distance from their own homes, he would wonder at the causes of these movements, and the reafon of this deftruction; and, not knowing that they possessed rational faculties, he would probably consider them as animals destined by nature to live upon one another.

I

.

I think the first question he would ask would be, and from whence do thefe fightings come? It would be replied of course, that they came from their lusts;-that these beings, though diminutive in their appearance were men ;-that they had pride and ambition ;-that they had envy and jealousy ;--that they indulged also hatred, and malice, and avarice, and anger;→ and that on account of some or other of these causes they quarrelled and fought with one another.

Well-but the superior being would say, is there no one on the earth which I see below me to advise them to conduct themselves better; or are the paffions you speak of eternally uppermoft and never to be fubdued? The reply would of course be, that in these little beings, called men, there had been implanted the faculty of reason, by the use of which they must know that their conduct was exceptionable, but that in these cases they seldom minded it. It would also be added in reply, that they had a religion, which was not only designed by a spirit from heaven who had once lived amongst them, but had been pronounced by him as efficatious to the end proposed; that one of the great objects of this religion was a due fubjugation of their paffions; and this was so much insisted upon, that no one of them was considered to have received this religion truly, unless his passions were subdued. but here the superior being would inquire, whether they acknowledged the religion Spoken of, and the authority from whence it came. To which it

would