Tertullian, who may be mentioned next in order of time, strongly condemned the practice of bearing arms, as it related to Christians. I shall give one or two extracts from him on this subject. In his dissertation on the worship of idols, he says, "Though the soldiers came to John, and received a certain form to be observed, and though the centurion believed, yet Jesus Christ, by disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier afterwards: for custom never sanctions an illicit act." And in 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.