his "Soldier's Garland," he says, "Can a soldier's life be lawful, when
Christ has pronounced, that he who lives by the sword shall perish by
the sword? Can one, who professes the peaceable doctrines of the Gospel,
be a soldier, when it is his duty not so much as to go to law? and shall
he, who is not to revenge his own wrongs, be instrumental in bringing
others into chains, imprisonment, torment, death?"

Cyprian, in his Epistle to Donatus, takes a view of such customs in his
own times, as he conceived to be repugnant to the spirit or the letter
of the Gospel. In looking at war, which was one of them, he speaks thus:
"Suppose thyself, says he, with me on the top of some very exalted
eminence, and from thence looking down upon the appearances of things
beneath thee. Let our prospect take in the whole horizon, and let us
view, with the indifference of persons not concerned in them, the
various motions and agitations of human life. Thou wilt then, I dare
say, have a real compassion for the circumstances of mankind, and for
the posture in which this view will represent them. And when thou
reflectest upon thy condition, thy thoughts will rise in transports of
gratitude and praise to God for having made thy escape from the
pollutions of the world. The things thou wilt principally observe, will
be the highways beset with robbers, the seas with pirates, encampments,
marches, and all the terrible forms of war and, bloodshed. When a single
murder is committed, it shall be deemed perhaps a crime; but that crime
shall commence a virtue, when committed under the shelter of public
authority, so that punishment is not rated by the measure of guilt, but
the more enormous the size of the wickedness is, so much the greater is
the chance for impunity." These are the sentiments of Cyprian, and that
they were the result of his views of Christianity, as taken from the
divine writings, there can be little doubt. If he had stood upon the
same eminence, and beheld the same sights previously to his conversion,
he might, like others, have neither thought piracy dishonourable, nor
war inglorious.

Lactantius, who lived some time after Cyprian, in his treatise
"Concerning the True Worship of God," says, "It can never be lawful for
a righteous man to go to war, whose warfare is in righteousness itself,"
And in another part of the same treatise he observes, that "no exception
can be made with respect to this command of God. It can never be lawful
t