yet of no
less efficacy; which is to punish, in this court, all the middle
acts and proceedings which tend to the duel, which I will enumerate
to you anon, and so to hew and vex the root in the branches, which,
no doubt, in the end will kill the root, and yet prevent the
extremity of law.

Now for the law of England, I see it excepted to, though ignorantly,
in two points. The one, that it should make no difference between
an insidious and foul murder, and the killing of a man upon fair
terms, as they now call it. The other, that the law hath not
provided sufficient punishment and reparations for contumely of
words, as the lie, and the like. But these are no better than
childish novelties against the divine law, and against all laws in
effect, and against the examples of all the bravest and most
virtuous nations of the world.

For first, for the law of God, there is never to be found any
difference made in homicide, but between homicide voluntary and
involuntary, which we term misadventure. And for the case of
misadventure itself, there were cities of refuge; so that the
offender was put to his flight, and that flight was subject to
accident, whether the revenger of blood should overtake him before
he had gotten sanctuary or no. It is true that our law hath made a
more subtle distinction between the will inflamed and the will
advised, between manslaughter in heat and murder upon prepensed
malice or cold blood, as the soldiers call it; an indulgence not
unfit for a choleric and warlike nation; for it is true, _ira_
_furor_ _brevis_, a man in fury is not himself. This privilege of
passion the ancient Roman law restrained, but to a case; that was,
if the husband took the adulterer in the manner. To that rage and
provocation only it gave way, that a homicide was justifiable. But
for a difference to be made in killing and destroying man, upon a
forethought purpose, between foul and fair, and, as it were, between
single murder and vied murder, it is but a monstrous child of this
latter age, and there is no shadow of it in any law, divine or
human. Only it is true, I find in the Scripture that Cain enticed
his brother into the field and slew him treacherously; but Lamech
vaunted of his manhood, that he would kill a young man, and if it
were to his hurt; so as I see no difference between an insidious
murder and a braving or presumptuous murder, but the difference
between Cain and Lamech. As for examples in civil st