ully use
you and persecute you.' How unnecessary, and how wrong then, they
would say, it is of the Church of England to retain these cursing
Psalms in her public worship, and put them into the mouths of her
congregations. Either they are merely painful, as well as
unnecessary to Christians; or if they mean anything, they excuse and
foster the habit too common among religious controversialists of
invoking the wrath of heaven on their opponents.

I argue with neither of the objectors. But the question is a
curious and an important one; and I am bound, I think, to examine it
in a sermon which, like the present, treats of David's chivalry.

What David meant by these curses can be best known from his own
actions. What certain persons have meant by them since is patent
enough from their actions. Mediaeval monks considered but too often
the enemies of their creed, of their ecclesiastical organisation,
even of their particular monastery, to be ipso facto enemies of God;
and applied to them the seeming curses of David's Psalms, with
fearful additions, of which David, to his honour, never dreamed.
'May they feel with Dathan and Abiram the damnation of Gehenna,'
{285} is a fair sample of the formulae which are found in the
writings of men who, while they called themselves the servants of
Jesus Christ our Lord, derived their notions of the next world
principally from the sixth book of Virgil's AEneid. And what they
meant by their words their acts shewed. Whenever they had the
power, they were but too apt to treat their supposed enemies in this
life, as they expected God to treat them in the next. The history
of the Inquisition on the continent, in America, and in the
Portuguese Indies--of the Marian persecutions in England--of the
Piedmontese massacres in the 17th century--are facts never to be
forgotten. Their horrors have been described in too authentic
documents; they remain for ever the most hideous pages in the
history of sinful human nature. Do we find a hint of any similar
conduct on the part of David? If not, it is surely probable that he
did not mean by his imprecations what the mediaeval clergy meant.

Certainly, whatsoever likeness there may have been in language, the
contrast in conduct is most striking. It is a special mark of
David's character, as special as his faith in God, that he never
avenges himself with his own hand. Twice he has Saul in his power:
once in the cave at Engedi, once at the camp a