He will crumble to the same
undistinguished ashes with yourself, and have sins enough of his own
to answer for. It is not the farcical benedictions of a bishop, nor
the cringing hypocrisy of a court of chaplains, nor the formality of
an act of Parliament, that can change guilt into innocence, or make
the punishment one pang the less. You may, perhaps, be unwilling to be
serious, but this destruction of the goods of Providence, this havoc
of the human race, and this sowing the world with mischief, must be
accounted for to him who made and governs it. To us they are only
present sufferings, but to him they are deep rebellions.
If there is a sin superior to every other, it is that of wilful
and offensive war. Most other sins are circumscribed within narrow
limits, that is, the power of one man cannot give them a very
general extension, and many kinds of sins have only a mental existence
from which no infection arises; but he who is the author of a war,
lets loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a
nation to death. We leave it to England and Indians to boast of
these honors; we feel no thirst for such savage glory; a nobler flame,
a purer spirit animates America. She has taken up the sword of
virtuous defence; she has bravely put herself between Tyranny and
Freedom, between a curse and a blessing, determined to expel the one
and protect the other.
It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there
was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America
is now engaged.
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