b: "I 'EDE UNLAWFULNESS bi! SELF-MURDER. been made public martyrs to their Own madness. Others having their natures overpowered with these extravagances, have lan- guished and sunk down to death by degrees. But I doubt the holy and 'righteous sentence of God will ekcuse neither one nor the other of them from the guilt of k'eif-destroyers. IV. The bloody trade of pride-fighting is *Mother Vice prat- tice, wherein the flesh, and limbs, and lives of men, are wit- lingly exposed to the strokes of clubs and swords, without any pretence of necessity, or any call froth divine providence. What is it but a degree of selfmurder, when men out of frolic or humour, but Of l'0w ambition of honour, or for the gain of a little pelf, challenge each other to these brutal combats i Their flesh is hacked and hewed with many a wound, their limbs are bruised and battered sorely, their blood is spilt upon a public stage, and life itself sonies pays for their folly. I do not suppose indeed that this sort of combatants will ever come within the reach of conviction by any thing that I can *rite : They are generally too thoughtless of God and religion, too sènseless of all that is serious, to look into treatises that re- late to sin and duty. But methinkt. I would not have such bloody practices eheouraged, by drawing in Any spectators, that ever pretend to godliness. I confess I am not acquainted with any persons that make the sight of these combats a part of their entertainment, but it would be well if such things were utterly cashiered and renounced by a nation that professes christianity. Did we but read with what just and severe reproof the pri- mitive fathers of the church used to inveigh against the barbarous, eruel and murdering spectacles of the gladiators at Rome, we should find that in their sense they were so highly offensive to God, that it was disgraceful for any person, who bore the name of a christian, to appear at such entertainments: And I per- suade myself, we should be ready to join with these venerable an0ients in an endeavour, as far as lies in us, to rout out this practice. Those who go to behold them as a matter of delight, and support, and encourage Mein by their contribution to such criminal combats, are in some sense partakers of their guilt. I might add also, that if we feast our eyes with such inhu. man sights as these, it makes blood and wounds too familiar to us, it sets human flesh and life at too vile and cheap a rate, it hardens the temper by degrees; and is ready to induce something of cruelty and brutal roughness, into a constitution, that before might have much of humanity in it. V. The wicked pride of duelling, when men stab and shoot eachother by contract and consent, has much of the guilt of self. murder belonging to it. Is it not a strange madnessfor men who are called christians
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