OF PEACE.—FROM LORD CLARENDON.

It was a very proper answer to him who asked, why any man should be delighted with beauty? that it was a question that none but a blind man could ask; since any beautiful object doth so much attract the sight of all men, that it is in no man’s power not to be pleased with it. Nor can any aversion or malignity towards the object irreconcile the eyes from looking upon it; as a man who hath an envenomed and mortal hatred against another who hath a most graceful and beautiful person, cannot hinder his eye from being delighted to behold that person, though that delight is far from going to the heart, as no man’s malice towards an excellent musician can keep his ear from being pleased with his music. No man can ask how or why men come to be delighted with peace but he who is without natural bowels,—who is deprived of all those affections which can only make life pleasant to him. Peace is that harmony in the state that health is in the body. No honour, no profit, no plenty can make him happy who is sick with a fever in his blood, and with defluctions and aches in his joints and bones; but health restored gives a relish to the other blessings, and is very merry without them: no kingdom can flourish or be at ease in which there is no peace,—which only makes men dwell at home and enjoy the labour of their own hands, and improve all the advantages which the air, and the climate, and the soil administer to them; and all which yield no comfort where there is no peace. God himself reckons health the greatest blessing he can bestow upon mankind 74and peace the greatest comfort and ornament he can confer upon states, which are a multitude of men gathered together. They who delight most in war are so much ashamed of it, that they pretend to desire nothing but peace,—that their heart is set upon nothing else. When Cæsar was engaging all the world in war, he wrote to Tully, “There was nothing worthier of an honest man than to have contention with nobody.” It was the highest aggravation that the prophet could find out in the description of the greatest wickedness, that “the way of peace they knew not;” and the greatest punishment of all their crookedness and perverseness was, that “they should not know peace.” A greater curse cannot befall the most wicked nation than to be deprived of peace. There is nothing of real and substantial comfort in this world but what is the product of peace; and whatsoever we may lawfully and innocently take delight in is the fruit and effect of peace. The solemn service of God, and performing our duty to Him in the exercise of regular devotion, which is the greatest business of our life, and in which we ought to take most delight, is the issue of peace. War breaks all that order, interrupts all that devotion, and even extinguisheth all that zeal which peace had kindled in us; lays waste the dwelling place of God as well as of man; and introduces and propagates opinions and practice as much against Heaven as against earth, and erects a deity that delights in nothing but cruelty and blood. Are we pleased with the enlarged commerce and society of large and opulent cities, or with the retired pleasures of the country? do we love stately palaces and noble houses, or take delight in pleasant groves and woods, or fruitful gardens, which teach and instruct nature to produce and bring forth more fruits, and flowers, and plants, than her own store can supply her with? all this we owe to peace; and the dissolution of this peace disfigures all this beauty, and, in a short time, covers and buries all this order and delight in ruin and rubbish. Finally, have we any content, satisfaction, and joy in the conversation of each other, in the knowledge and understanding of those arts and sciences which more adorn mankind than all those buildings and plantations do the fields and grounds on which they stand? even this is the blessed effect and legacy of peace; and war lays our natures and manners as waste as our gardens and our habitations; and we can as easily preserve the beauty of the one as the integrity of the other under the cursed jurisdiction of drums and trumpets.