War is a scourge of the wrath of God, which by famine, fire, or sword
humbleth the spirits of the repentant, trieth the patience of the
faithful, and hardeneth the hearts of the ungodly. It is the misery of
time and the terror of Nature, the dispeopling of the earth and the ruin
of her beauty. Her life is action, her food blood, her honour valour,
and her joy conquest. She is valour's exercise and honour's adventure,
reason's trouble and peace's enemy: she is the stout man's love and the
weak man's fear, the poor man's toil and the rich man's plague: she is
the armourer's benefactor and the chirurgeon's agent, the coward's ague
and the desperate's overthrow. She is the wish of envy, the plague of
them that wish her, the shipwreck of life, and the agent for death. The
best of her is, that she is the seasoner of the body and the manager of
the mind for the enduring of labour in the resolution of action. She
thunders in the air, rips up the earth, cuts through the seas, and
consumes with the fire: she is indeed the invention of malice, the work
of mischief, the music of hell, and the dance of the devil. She makes
the end of youth untimely and of age wretched, the city's sack and the
country's beggary: she is the captain's pride and the captive's sorrow,
the throat of blood and the grave of flesh. She is the woe of the world,
the punishment of sin, the passage of danger, and the messenger of
destruction. She is the wise man's warning and the fool's payment, the
godly man's grief and the wicked man's game. In sum, so many are her
wounds, so mortal her cures, so dangerous her course, and so devilish
her devices, that I will wade no further in her rivers of blood, but
only thus conclude in her description:--She is God's curse and man's
misery, hell's practice and earth's hell.