116 CHARGE AGAINST DUELS. 



The other, That the law hath not provided suf 

 ficient punishment, and reparations, for contumely 

 of words, as the lye, and the like. 



But these are no better than childish novelties 

 against the divine law, and against all laws in effect, 

 and against the examples of all the bravest and most 

 virtuous nations of the world. 



For first, for the law of God, there is never to be 

 found any difference made in homicide, but between 

 homicide voluntary, and involuntary, which we term 

 misadventure. And for the case of misadventure 

 itself, there were cities of refuge ; so that the offen 

 der was put to his flight, and that flight was subject to 

 accident, whether the revenger of blood should over 

 take him before he had gotten sanctuary or no. It 

 is true that our law hath made a more subtle dis 

 tinction between the will inflamed and the will ad 

 vised, between manslaughter in heat and murder 

 upon prepensed malice or cold blood, as the soldiers 

 call it, an indulgence not unfit for a choleric and 

 warlike nation ; for it is true, &quot; ira furor brevis ;&quot; a 

 man in fury is not himself. This privilege of pas 

 sion the ancient Roman law restrained, but to a 

 case : that was, if the husband took the adulterer in 

 the manner ; to that rage and provocation only it 

 gave way, that an homicide was justifiable. But 

 for a difference to be made in case of killing and 

 destroying man, upon a fore-thought purpose, be 

 tween foul and fair, and as it were between single 

 murder and vied murder, it is but a monstrous child 

 of this latter age, and there is no shadow of it in 



