they persuade them this hellish course of life is holy, they promise heaven
to such as venture their lives _bello sacro_, and that by these bloody
wars, as Persians, Greeks, and Romans of old, as modern Turks do now their
commons, to encourage them to fight, _ut cadant infeliciter_. "If they die
in the field, they go directly to heaven, and shall be canonised for
saints." (O diabolical invention!) put in the Chronicles, _in perpetuam rei
memoriam_, to their eternal memory: when as in truth, as [323]some hold, it
were much better (since wars are the scourge of God for sin, by which he
punisheth mortal men's peevishness and folly) such brutish stories were
suppressed, because _ad morum institutionem nihil habent_, they conduce not
at all to manners, or good life. But they will have it thus nevertheless,
and so they put note of [324]"divinity upon the most cruel and pernicious
plague of human kind," adore such men with grand titles, degrees, statues,
images, [325]honour, applaud, and highly reward them for their good
service, no greater glory than to die in the field. So Africanus is
extolled by Ennius: Mars, and [326]Hercules, and I know not how many
besides of old, were deified; went this way to heaven, that were indeed
bloody butchers, wicked destroyers, and troublers of the world, prodigious
monsters, hell-hounds, feral plagues, devourers, common executioners of
human kind, as Lactantius truly proves, and Cyprian to Donat, such as were
desperate in wars, and precipitately made away themselves, (like those
Celts in Damascen, with ridiculous valour, _ut dedecorosum putarent muro
ruenti se subducere_, a disgrace to run away for a rotten wall, now ready
to fall on their heads,) such as will not rush on a sword's point, or seek
to shun a cannon's shot, are base cowards, and no valiant men. By which
means, _Madet orbis mutuo sanguine_, the earth wallows in her own blood,

[327]_Savit amor ferri et scelerati insania belli_; and for that, which if
it be done in private, a man shall be rigorously executed, [328]"and which
is no less than murder itself; if the same fact be done in public in wars,
it is called manhood, and the party is honoured for it."

[329] ------"Prosperum et felix scelus,
Virtus vocatur."------

We measure all as Turks do, by the event, and most part, as Cyprian notes,
in all ages, countries, places, _saevitiae magnitudo impunitatem sceleris
acquirit_; the foulness of the fact vindicates the offend