First, How to resist force without striking again, or how to strike with reverence, will need some skill to make intelligible. He that shall oppose an assault only with a shield to receive the blows, or in any more respectful posture, without a sword in his hand, to abate the confidence and force of the assailant, will quickly be at an end of his resistance, and will find such a defence serve only to draw on himself the worse usage. This is as ridiculous a way of resisting, as Juvenal thought it of fighting; “ ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum. ” And the success of the combat will be unavoidably the same he there describes it:

“Libertas pauperis haec est:

Pulsatus rogat, et pugnis concisus, adorat,

Ut liceat paucis cum dentibus inde reverti.”