A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian Politics. Richard Baxter

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СКАЧАТЬ advancement which they secretly aimed at, and the destruction of the present government, or the soldiers' ruin, which is like to be the effect. A mutinous army is likest hell of any thing I know among God's creatures, and next hell, there is scarce a worse place for their commanders to be in.

      Direct. VIII. Use not your power or liberty to the robbing, or oppressing, or injury of any. Though military thieves and oppressors may escape the gallows more than others, they shall come as soon to hell as any. If you plunder, and spoil, and tyrannize over the poor people, under pretence of supplying your own wants, there is a God in heaven that will hear their cries, and will avenge them speedily, though you seem to go scot-free for a time. You may take a pride in domineering over others, and making yourselves lords by violence of other men's estates, and when you see none that will question you for it, you may take that which you have most mind to. But the poor and oppressed have a just Defender, who hath a severer punishment for you than the sword or gallows! And though he take you not in the very fact, and his sentence is not presently executed, yet be certain of it, that your day is coming.

      Direct. IX. Take heed lest custom, and the frequency of God's judgments, do harden your hearts into a reprobate stupidity. Many a man that formerly by the sight of a corpse, or the groanings of the sick, was awakened to serious thoughts of his latter end, when he cometh into an army, and hath often seen the dead lie scattered on the earth, and hath often escaped death himself, groweth utterly senseless, and taketh blockishness to be valour, and custom maketh such warnings to be of no effect. You can scarce name a more strange and lamentable proof of the maddening and hardening nature of sin! that men should be most senseless, when they are in the greatest danger! and least fear God, when they are among his dreadful judgments! and least hear his voice, when his calls are loudest! and live as if they should not die, when they look death so often in the face, and see so many dead before them! That they should be most regardless of their endless life, when they are nearest it; and sense itself hath such notable advantage to tell them of all this! What a monstrous kind of sottish stupidity is this! Think whither the soul is gone, when you see the carcass on the earth; and think where your own must be for ever.

      Direct. X. Take heed of falling into drunkenness and sensuality, though temptations and liberty be never so great. It is too common with soldiers, because they are oft put to thirst and wants, to think they may lawfully pour it in, when they come at it, without moderation or restraint: even as many poor men take a gluttonous meal for no sin, because they have so many days of hunger; so is it with such soldiers in their drink: till drunkenness first have wounded their consciences, and afterwards grow common, till it have debauched and seared them; and then they have drowned religion and reason, and are turned sottish, miserable brutes.

      Direct. XI. If necessity deprive you of the benefits of God's public or stated worship, see that you labour to repair that loss, by double diligence in those spiritual duties, which yet you have opportunity for. If you must march or watch on the Lord's days, redeem your other time the more. If you cannot hear sermons, be not without some profitable book, and often read it; and let your meditations be holy, and your discourses edifying. For these you have opportunities, if you have hearts.

      Direct. XII. Take heed that command or successes do not puff you up and make you overvalue yourselves, and incline you to rebel against your governors. What lamentable effects hath England lately seen of this! A silly, half-witted soldier, if he be but made a captain, doth carry it as if he were wiser than the preachers, or the judge! as if his dignity had added to his wit! When victories have laid the power at men's feet, and they think now that none is able to control them, how few are they that abuse not such success to their undoing, and are not conquered by the pride of their own hearts, when they have conquered others! How ordinarily do they mis-expound the providence of God, and think he hath put the government into their hands, because they have the strength; and from the histories of former successful rebels, and the fairness of their opportunity, encourage themselves to rebel, and think they do but what is their duty! How easily do they justify themselves in those unlawful deeds, which impartial by-standers see the evil of! And how easily do they quiet their consciences, when they have but power enough to raise up flatterers, and to stop the mouth of wholesome reprehension! How lamentably doth prosperity make them drunk, and sudden advancement overturn their brains! And their greatness, together with their pride and fury, preserveth them from the accesses of wisdom, and of sober men, that so their malady may have no remedy: and there, like a drunken man, they rave awhile, and speak big words, and lay about them, and glory in the honour of a pestilence, that they can kill men; and we must not speak to them, till their heads are settled, and they come to themselves, and that is not usually till the hand of God have laid them lower than it found them, and then perhaps they will again hear reason; unless pride hath left their souls as desperate as at last it doth their bodies or estates. The experience of this age may stand on record, as a teacher to future generations, what power there is in great successes, to conquer both reason, religion, righteousness, professions, vows, and all obligations to God and man, by puffing up the heart with pride, and thereby making the understanding drunken.

      CHAPTER VIII.

      DIRECTONS AGAINST MURDER

Tit. 1. Advice against Murder

      Though murder be a sin which human nature and interest do so powerfully rise up against, that one would think besides the laws of nature, and the fear of temporal punishment, there should need no other argument against it; and though it be a sin which is not frequently committed, except by soldiers; yet because man's corrupted heart is liable to it, and because one sin of such a heinous nature may be more mischievous than many small infirmities, I shall not wholly pass by this sin, which falls in order here before me. I shall give men no other advice against it, than only to open to them, 1. The causes; 2. The greatness; and 3. The consequents of the sin.

      I. The causes of murder, are either the nearest, or the more radical and remote. The opening of the nearest sort of causes, will be but to tell you, how many ways of murdering the world is used to! And when you know the cause the contrary to it is the prevention. Avoid these causes, and you avoid the sin.

      1. The greatest cause of the cruellest murders is unlawful wars. All that a man killeth in an unlawful war, he murdereth; and all that the army killeth, he that setteth them at work by command or counsel, is guilty of himself. And therefore, how dreadful a thing is an unrighteous war! And how much have men need to look about them, and try every other lawful way, and suffer long, before they venture upon war! It is the skill and glory of a soldier, when he can kill more than other men. He studieth it; he maketh it the matter of his greatest care, and valour, and endeavour; he goeth through very great difficulties to accomplish it; this is not like a sudden or involuntary act. Thieves and robbers kill single persons; but soldiers murder thousands at a time: and because there is none at present to judge them for it, they wash their hands as if they were innocent, and sleep as quietly as if the avenger of blood would never come. Oh what devils are those counsellors and incendiaries to princes and states, who stir them up to unlawful wars!

      2. Another cause and way of murder, is by the pride and tyranny of men in power; when they do it easily, because they can do it; when their will and interest is their rule, and their passion seemeth a sufficient warrant for their injustice. It is not only Neros, Tiberiuses, Domitians, &c. that are guilty of this crying crime; but oh! what man that careth for his soul, had not rather be tormented a thousand years, than have the blood-guiltiness of a famous, applauded Alexander, or Cæsar, or Tamerlane, to answer for! So dangerous a thing is it to have power to do mischief, that Uriah may fall by a David's guilt, and Crispus may be killed by his father Constantine. Oh what abundance of horrid murders do the histories of almost all empires and kingdoms of the world afford us! The maps of the affairs of Greeks and Romans, of Tartarians, Turks, Russians, Germans, of heathens and infidels, of papists and too many protestants, are drawn out with too many purple lines, and their histories written in letters of blood. What write the christians of the infidels, the orthodox of the Arians, (Romans, or Goths, or Vandals,) or the most impartial historians of the mock-catholics of Rome, but "blood, blood, blood." How proudly and loftily doth a tyrant look, when he telleth СКАЧАТЬ