This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[294]
Let this be the constitution of your political laws in time of peace,
and God will be so merciful as to preserve this excellent settlement free
from disturbance: and may that time never come which may innovate any thing,
and change it for the contrary. But since it must needs happen that mankind
fall into troubles and dangers, either undesignedly or intentionally, come
let us make a few constitutions concerning them, that so being apprised
beforehand what ought to be done, you may have salutary counsels ready
when you want them, and may not then be obliged to go to seek what is to
be done, and so be unprovided, and fall into dangerous circumstances. May
you be a laborious people, and exercise your souls in virtuous actions,
and thereby possess and inherit the land without wars; while neither any
foreigners make war upon it, and so afflict you, nor any internal sedition
seize upon it, whereby you may do things that are contrary to your fathers,
and so lose the laws which they have established. And may you continue
in the observation of those laws which God hath approved of, and hath delivered
to you. Let all sort of warlike operations, whether they befall you now
in your own time, or hereafter in the times of your posterity, be done
out of your own borders: but when you are about to go to war, send embassages
and heralds to those who are your voluntary enemies, for it is a right
thing to make use of words to them before you come to your weapons of war;
and assure them thereby, that although you have a numerous army, with horses
and weapons, and, above these, a God merciful to you, and ready to assist
you, you do however desire them not to compel you to fight against them,
nor to take from them what they have, which will indeed be our gain, but
what they will have no reason to wish we should take to ourselves. And
if they hearken to you, it will be proper for you to keep peace with them;
but if they trust in their own strength, as superior to yours, and will
not do you justice, lead your army against them, making use of God as your
supreme Commander, but ordaining for a lieutenant under him one that is
of the greatest courage among you; for these different commanders, besides
their being an obstacle to actions that are to be done on the sudden, are
a disadvantage to those that make use of them. Lead an army pure, and of
chosen men, composed of all such as have extraordinary strength of body
and hardiness of soul; but do you send away the timorous part, lest they
run away in the time of action, and so afford an advantage to your enemies.
Do you also give leave to those that have lately built them houses, and
have not yet lived in them a year's time; and to those that have planted
them vineyards, and have not yet been partakers of their fruits, - to continue
in their own country; as well as those also who have betrothed, or lately
married them wives, lest they have such an affection for these things that
they he too sparing of their lives, and, by reserving themselves for these
enjoyments, they become voluntary cowards, on account of their wives.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.