ndly manner, how would
a cabinet, consisting of spiritually minded men, settle with a cabinet
of other men, who had not brought their passions under due regulation,
and who, besides, had no notion of the unlawfulness of war.

I apprehend that it will not be denied, that men, as ferocious as any
recorded in history, were those, who were found in America, when that
continent was discovered. We hear nothing of Africans, or of Asiatics,
which would induce us to suppose, that they were as wild and as
barbarous as these. And nothing is more true of these, than they, were
frequently concerned in wars. I shall therefore take these for an
example, and I shall shew by the opposite conduct of two different
communities towards them, that it rests with men to live peaceably or
not, as they cultivate the disposition to do it, or as they follow the
policy of the Gospel in preference of the policy of the world.

When the English, Dutch, and others, began to people America, they
purchased land of the natives. But when they went to that continent,
notwithstanding there were amiable persons among them, and friends to
civil and religious liberty, they went with the notions of worldly
policy, and they did not take with them the Christian wisdom of the
unlawfulness of war. They acted on the system of preparation, because
there might be danger. They never settled without palisadoes and a fort.
They kept their nightly watches, though unmolested. They were, in short,
in the midst of war, though no injury had been offered them by the
natives, and though professedly in the midst of peace.

In the peopling of Connecticut, for I must begin with some one state, it
was ordered at an English court,[16] "holden at Dorchester, on the
seventh day of June, 1736, that every town should keep a watch, and be
well supplied with ammunition. The constables were directed to warn the
watches in their turns, and to make it their care, that they should be
kept according to the direction of the court. They were required also to
take care that the inhabitants were well furnished with arms and
ammunition, and kept in a constant state of defence." As these infant
settlements, the author observes, "were filled and surrounded with
numerous savages, the people conceived themselves in danger, when they
lay down, and when they rose up, when they went out, and when they came
in. Their circumstances were such, that it was judged necessary for
every man to be a soldier."