"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where tumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd, My soul is sick with every day's report, Of wrong and outrage, with which earth is fill'd. Lands, intersected by a narrow frith, Abhor each other. Mountains interpos'd, Make enemies of nations who had else, Like kindred drops, been mingled into one. Thus men devotes his brother, and destroys-- Then what is man? And what man, seeing this, And having human feelings, does not blush, And hang his head, to think himself a man?" COWPER SECT. VI. _Subject farther considered--Sad conceptions of those relative to the Divine Being, and the nature of the Gospel, who plead for the necessity of war--War necessary, where statesmen pursue the policy of the world--Nature and tendency of this policy--but not necessary where they pursue the policy of the Gospel--Nature and tendency of this policy--This tendency farther confirmed by a supposed case of a few Quakers becoming the governors of the world._ It is now an old maxim, and time with all its improvements has not worn it away, that wars are necessary in the present constitution of the world. It has not even been obliterated, that they are necessary, in order to sweep off mankind on account of the narrow boundaries of the earth. But they, who make use of this argument, must be aware, that, in espousing it, they declare no less, than that God, in the formation of his system, had only half calculated or half provided for its continuance, and that they charge him with a worse cruelty than is recorded of the worst of men: because, if he told men to increase and multiply, and gave them passions accordingly, it would appear as if he had created them only to enjoy an eternal feast in the sight of their destruction. Nor do they make him a moral governor of the world, if he allows men to butcher one another without an individual provocation or offence. Neither do persons, arguing for the necessity of wars, do less than set themselves above the prophecies or oracles of God, which declare, that such warfare shall some time or other cease.