falls much lower; and that the iron enters deeper into his soul than into his body, and kills much farther than it reaches. And this introduces the other fatal consequence, which attends the person thus vanquished; and that is,"

"Death eternal. When two persons come into the field upon such an expedition, they defy one another, they defy the laws both of God and man, and they defy hell: their business is, which shall send the other to that place of misery first. For certainly whosoever quits the body with the marks of murder and revenge fresh upon his soul, and passes from his conquering adversary to his dreadful judge, shall in that world be condemned for a murderer, though it was his ill hap to be murdered in this,".

"Nay, there will lie a double charge of murder upon him: namely, for being both the unjust occasion of his own death, and

the

For,

the designer of his adversary's: for it is the design that makes the murderer, and not the event and issue of the action, which are wholly contingent and extrinsical to the will. shall a man be therefore accounted no murderer, because he had less courage, less skill, or less luck than his opposite? because his purpose was stronger than his arm? or because his misguided rapier hit upon a rib, and kept the fatal point from the regions of life, and so gave the adversary opportunity to be more sure and mischievous in his thrust? All which plea or excuse amounts to no more than this, that he would have. slain his adversary with all his heart, but .was prevented, and could not.”

"I neither will nor dare pronounce any thing in limitation of the extent of God's mercy; but this I shall say, that, according to a standing rule and tenor of God's revealed will, he that dies in a duel undertook upon an unjust cause, affords no ground for any

one

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one to judge that he is saved: for he dies in his sin, directing his sword to his brother's

heart; so that there is nothing but his last breath passing between his murderous intention, and the final giving up of his accounts to God; before whom he has no other cause to allege for his dying in this manner, but that he was proud, passionate, or revengeful; sad qualifications to recommend a man to the tribunal of such a judge!"

"We have seen here the miserable consequences that befal the conquered dueller. Let us now, in the next place, take a survey of those that befal the conqueror; and these are three."

"In case he is apprehended: The law has provided that for him, which he did for his adversary, but in a more ignominious manner. The rope and the gibbet are to be his portion; die he must; and what honour a man wins, or saves, by that which gives him an oppor

tunity of being hanged, is hard to be under

stood; but he that mistakes the 'cart for a

triumphal chariot, or the gallows-tree for a triumphal arch, may apply himself to the obtaining such victories as these."

"But, secondly, suppose that he escapes by flight; yet then he quits his country," and lives a banished man, and like Cain, having murdered his brother, he presently betakes himself to wander about the world, leaving behind him the confiscation of his goods, a family lamenting, and perhaps starving; and some of them peradventure dying for grief, and so feeling the bad influence of his action, as really, though not in the same manner, as his slain adversary.",

"Surely these will be sad accidents to a man in cold blood, when the fury of his passion, which abused his reason, and represented revenge so pleasant, shall be over, and transmit the thing naked to his recovered judgment,

judgment, to be considered according to its real aspect and all its sharp events,"

"By this time, undoubtedly, he will see how much better it had been for him to have kept himself quiet and innocent in the peaceable enjoyment of his friends, his estate, and country; than to wander as an indigent murderer in a strange land, from whence the sense of his guilt, the severity of the laws, and the exasperation of the murdered person's friends, ready to prosecute those laws against him, continually terrify him from all thoughts of a return.

"But, in the third and last place, we will suppose the man to have better fortune: That he has fought and killed his adversary, and so satisfied his revenge; and moreover, that through the intercession of great friends, willing to share his guilt, and to derive some of the blood upon their own heads, he has not by flight escaped, but by a full acquitment outbrave?