“[I]n deliberations of war against the Turk, it hath been often, with great judgment, maintained, that Christian princes and states have always a sufficient ground of invasive war against the enemy; not for cause of religion, but upon a just fear; forasmuch as it is a fundamental law in the Turkish empire, that they may, without any other provocation, make war upon Christendom for the propagation of their law; so that there lieth upon the Christians a perpetual fear of a war, hanging over their heads, from them; and therefore they may at all times, as they think good, be upon the prevention.... [A]s long as men are men, the sons, as the poets allude, of Prometheus, and not of Epimetheus, and as long as reason is reason, a just fear will be a just cause of a preventative war; but especially if it be part of the case, that there be a nation that is manifestly detected to aspire to monarchy and new acquest; then other states, assuredly, cannot be justly accused for not staying for the first blow; or for not accepting Polyphemus’s courtesy, to be the last that shall be eaten up.”
—Francis Bacon, Considerations Touching A War With Spain (1624) reprinted in 2 Basil Montagu, ed., Works of Francis Bacon 204-205 (1850).
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