Peace. You know it is a great controversy, how the kings of the earth shall thus deal with the whore in the seventeenth chapter, and yet so bewail her in the eighteenth chapter.
Truth. If we take it that these kings of the earth shall first hate, and plunder, and tear, and burn this whore, and yet afterward shall relent and bewail their cruel dealing toward her: or else, that as some kings deal so terribly with her, yet others of those kings shall bewail her:—
If either of these two answers stand, or a better be given, yet none of them can prove it lawful for people to give power to their kings and magistrates thus to deal with them, their subjects, for their conscience; nor for magistrates to assume a tittle more than the people betrust them with; nor for one people out of conscience to God, and for Christ’s sake, thus to kill and slaughter and burn each other. However, it may please the righteous judge, according to the famous types of Gideon’s and Jehoshaphat’s battles, to permit in justice, and to order in wisdom, these mighty and mutual slaughters each of other.
Peace. We have now, dear Truth, through the gracious hand of God, clambered up to the top of this our tedious discourse.
Truth. Oh! it is mercy inexpressible that either thou or I have had so long a breathing time, and that together!
Peace. If English ground must yet be drunk with English blood, oh! where shall Peace repose her wearied head and heavy heart?
Truth. Dear Peace, if thou find welcome, and the God of peace miraculously please to quench these all-devouring flames, yet where shall Truth find rest from cruel persecutions?
Peace. Oh! will not the authority of holy scriptures, the commands and declarations of the Son of God, therein produced by thee, together with all the lamentable experiences of former and present slaughters, prevail with the sons of men, especially with the sons of peace, to depart from the dens of lions, and mountains of leopards, and to put on the bowels, if not of Christianity, yet of humanity each to other?
Truth. Dear Peace, Habakkuk’s fishes keep their constant bloody game of persecutions in the world’s mighty ocean; the greater taking, plundering, swallowing up the lesser. Oh! happy he whose portion is the God of Jacob! who hath nothing to lose under the sun; but hath a state, a house, an inheritance, a name, a crown, a life, past all the plunderers’, ravishers’, murderers’ reach and fury!