this thing should be sufficient to change and reclaim men, that it is
a savage and intemperate habit, that it brings sickness and heaviness
upon the body, and that it inclines the mind the more brutishly to
bloodshed and destruction, when we have once accustomed ourselves
neither to entertain a guest nor keep a wedding nor to treat our
friends without blood and slaughter.
5. And if what is argued about the return of souls into bodies is
not of force enough to beget faith, yet methinks the very uncertainty
of the thing should fill us with apprehension and fear. Suppose, for
instance, one should in some night-engagement run on with his drawn
sword upon one that had fallen down and covered his body with his arms,
and should in the mean time hear one say, that he was not very sure,
but that he fancied and believed, that the party lying there was his
own son, brother, father, or tent-companion; which were more advisable,
think you,—to hearken to a false suggestion, and so to let go an enemy
under the notion of a friend, or to slight an authority not sufficient
to beget faith, and to slay a friend instead of a foe? This you will
all say would be insupportable. Do but consider the famous Merope in
the tragedy, who taking up a hatchet, and lifting it at her son’s head,
whom she took for her son’s murderer, speaks thus as she was ready to
give the fatal blow,