ourselves, if another's right is not injured; the force therefore, which inviolably abstains from touching the rights of others, is not unjust. For as the same Cicero observes some where in his Epistles, that as there are two modes of contending, the one by argument, and the other by force, and as the former is peculiar to man, and the latter common to him with the brute creation, we must have recourse to the latter, when it is impossible to use the former. And again, what can be opposed to force, but force? Ulpian observes that Cassius says, it is lawful to repel force by force, and it is a right apparently provided by nature to repel arms with arms, with whom Ovid agrees, observing that the laws permit us to take up arms against those that bear them. II. The observation that all war is not repugnant to the law of nature, may be more amply proved from sacred history. For when Abraham with his servants and confederates had gained a victory, by force of arms, over the four Kings, who had plundered Sodom, God approved of his act by the mouth of his priest Melchisedech, who said to him, "Blessed be the most high God, who hath delivered thine enemies into thine hand." Gen. xiv. 20. Now Abraham had taken up arms, as appears from the history, without any special command from God. But this man, no less eminent for sanctity than wisdom, felt himself authorized by the law of nature, as it is admitted by the evidence of Berosus, and Orpheus, who were strangers. There is no occasion to appeal to the history of the seven nations, whom God delivered up into the hands of the Israelites to be destroyed. For there was a special command to execute the judgment of God upon nations guilty of the greatest crimes. From whence these wars are literally styled in scripture, Battles of the Lord, as undertaken, not by human will, but by divine appointment. The xvii. chapter of Exodus supplies a passage more to the purpose, relating the overthrow which the Israelites, conducted by Moses and Joshua, made of the Amalekites. In this act, there was no express commission from God, but only an approval after it was done. But in the xix. chap. of Deut. ver. 10, 15. God has prescribed general and standing laws to his people on the manner of making war, by this circumstance shewing that a war may be just without any express commandment from him. Because in the same passage, a plain distinction is made between the case of the seven nations and that of others. And as there is no special edict prescribing the just causes for which war may be undertaken, the determination of them is left to the discovery of natural reason. Of this kind is the war of Jephthah against the Ammonites, in defence of their borders. Jud. xi. and the war of David against the same people for having violated the rights of his Ambassadors. 2 Sam. x. To the preceding observations may be added, what the inspired writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says of Gideon, Barack, Sampson, Jephthah,