"4th. But it may be asked, what is to prevent repeated and continued
aggression? I answer, first, not instruments of destruction, but the
moral principle which God has placed in the bosom of every man. I think
that obedience to the law of God, on the part of the injured, is the
surest preventive against the repetition of injury. I answer, secondly,
suppose that acting in obedience to the law of benevolence will not
prevent the repetition of injury, will acting on the principle of
retaliation prevent it?" Again; "I believe aggression from a foreign
nation to be the intimation from God that we are disobeying the law of
benevolence, and that this is his mode of teaching nations their duty,
in this respect, to each other. So that aggression seems to me in no
manner to call for retaliation and injury, but rather to call for
special kindness and good-will."

This argument, if such it can be called, is equally applicable to
individual aggressions. We are bound to regard them as intimations of
our want of benevolence, and to reward the aggressors for the
intimations! Is it true, that in this world the wicked only are
oppressed, and that the good are always the prospered and happy? Even
suppose this true, and that I, as a sinful man, deserve God's anger, is
this any reason why I should not resist the assassin, and seek to bring
him to punishment? The whole of this argument of Dr. Wayland applies
with much greater force to municipal courts than to war.

V. "Let us suppose a nation to abandon all means both of offence and of
defence, to lay aside all power of inflicting injury, and to rely for
self-preservation solely upon the justice of its own conduct, and the
moral effect which such a course of conduct would produce upon the
consciences of men. * * * * How would such a nation be protected from