Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/54

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS with bloodshed, I, for my part, not only can not approve them, but I believe there is nothing more wicked and criminal, and have the opinion that such men deserve to be branded as highway robbers, and that they are unworthy of the name of Christians.

The second danger that threatens us from the foreign lords and their wars is that justice between man and man is stopped; as an old proverb says, "When arms are up in the hands, laws are under the feet." The term "right of war" means nothing but violence, use it as you will, turn it over as you will. Yet it is objected—force must be employed to reduce the disobedient if they refuse to yield obedience to things lawful and right. Yea, verily, it were good it went no farther, and that the thunderbolt of war struck these alone, and that each forced only the disobedient to obedience in things lawful. But what sayest thou of the man who takes money and helps a foreign master to plunder, lay waste, and rob those who have done him no injury whatever; nay, who carries his sword to such masters whom it does not become to go to war at all, bishops, popes, abbots, and this, too, for vile money? Further, the foreign lords do prejudice to the cause of justice in so far that their gifts blind the eyes of every man, be he as wise as you will, and deprive him of his reason as well as of his piety; as Moses teaches, "A gift doth blind the eyes of the wise and pervert the words of the righteous."