generis as Tertullian calls it, but ruina.
Had Democritus been present at the late civil wars
in France, those abominable wars—bellaque
matribus detestata, [299]"where in less than ten
years, ten thousand men were consumed,” saith
Collignius, twenty thousand churches overthrown; nay,
the whole kingdom subverted (as [300]Richard Dinoth
adds). So many myriads of the commons were butchered
up, with sword, famine, war, tanto odio utrinque
ut barbari ad abhorrendam lanienam obstupescerent,
with such feral hatred, the world was amazed at it:
or at our late Pharsalian fields in the time of Henry
the Sixth, betwixt the houses of Lancaster and York,
a hundred thousand men slain, [301]one writes; [302]another,
ten thousand families were rooted out, “that
no man can but marvel,” saith Comineus, “at
that barbarous immanity, feral madness, committed betwixt
men of the same nation, language, and religion.”
[303]_Quis furor, O cives_? “Why do the
Gentiles so furiously rage,” saith the Prophet
David, Psal. ii. 1. But we may ask, why do the
Christians so furiously rage? [304]_Arma volunt, quare
poscunt, rapiuntque juventus_? Unfit for Gentiles,
much less for us so to tyrannise, as the Spaniard
in the West Indies, that killed up in 42 years (if
we may believe [305]Bartholomeus a Casa, their own
bishop) 12 millions of men, with stupend and exquisite
torments; neither should I lie (said he) if I said
50 millions. I omit those French massacres, Sicilian
evensongs, [306]the Duke of Alva’s tyrannies,
our gunpowder machinations, and that fourth fury,
as [307]one calls it, the Spanish inquisition, which
quite obscures those ten persecutions, [308]------saevit
toto Mars impius orbe. Is not this [309]_mundus
furiosus_, a mad world, as he terms it, insanum
bellum? are not these mad men, as [310]Scaliger
concludes, qui in praelio acerba morte, insaniae,
suae memoriam pro perpetuo teste relinquunt posteritati;
which leave so frequent battles, as perpetual memorials
of their madness to all succeeding ages? Would
this, think you, have enforced our Democritus to laughter,
or rather made him turn his tune, alter his tone,
and weep with [311]Heraclitus, or rather howl, [312]roar,
and tear his hair in commiseration, stand amazed;
or as the poets feign, that Niobe was for grief quite
stupefied, and turned to a stone? I have not yet
said the worst, that which is more absurd and [313]mad,
in their tumults, seditions, civil and unjust wars,
[314]_quod stulte sucipitur, impie geritur, misere
finitur_. Such wars I mean; for all are not to
be condemned, as those fantastical Anabaptists vainly
conceive. Our Christian tactics are all out as
necessary as the Roman acies, or Grecian phalanx, to
be a soldier is a most noble and honourable profession
(as the world is), not to be spared, they are our
best walls and bulwarks, and I do therefore acknowledge
that of [315]Tully to be most true, “All our
civil affairs, all our studies, all our pleading,