An Inquiry Into the Accordancy of War with the Principles of Christianity

principles and regulate his conduct. These observations apply to those objectors who loosely say that “wars are necessary;” for supposing the Christian religion to prohibit war, it is preposterous, and irreverent also, to justify ourselves in supporting it, because “it is necessary.” To talk of a divine law which must be disobeyed, implies, indeed, such a confusion of moral principles as well as laxity of them, that neither the philosopher or the Christian are required to notice it. But, perhaps, some of those who say that wars are necessary, do not very accurately inquire what they mean. There are two sorts of necessity⁠—moral and physical; and these, it is probable, some men are accustomed to confound. That there is any physical necessity for war⁠—that people cannot, if they choose, refuse to engage in it, no one will maintain. And a moral necessity to perform an action, consists only in the prospect of a certain degree of evil by refraining from it. If, then, those who say that “wars are necessary,” mean that they are physically necessary, we deny it. If they mean that wars avert greater evils than they occasion, we ask for proof. Proof has never yet been given: and even if we thought that we possessed such proof, we should still be referred to the primary question⁠—“What is the will of God?”

It is some satisfaction to be able to give, on a question of this nature, the testimony of some great minds against the lawfulness of war, opposed as those testimonies are to the general prejudice and the general practice of the world. It has been observed by Beccaria, that “it is the fate of great truths, to glow only like a flash of lightning amidst the dark clouds in which error has enveloped the universe; and if our testimonies are few or transient, it matters not, so that their light be the light of truth.” There are, indeed, many, who in describing the horrible particulars of a siege or a battle, indulge in some declamations on the horrors of war, such as has been often repeated and often applauded, and as often forgotten. But such declamations are of little value and of little effect: he who reads the next paragraph finds, probably, that he is invited to follow the path to glory and to victory⁠—to share the hero’s danger and partake the hero’s praise; and he soon discovers that the moralizing parts of his author are the impulse of feelings rather than of principles, and thinks that though it may be very well to write, yet it is better to forget them.

There are however, testimonies, delivered in the calm of reflection, by acute and enlightened men, which may reasonably be allowed at least so much weight as to free the present inquiry from the charge of being wild or visionary. Christianity indeed needs no such auxiliaries; but if they induce an examination of her duties, a wise man will not wish them to be disregarded.

“They who defend war,” says Erasmus, “must defend the dispositions which lead to war; and these dispositions are absolutely forbidden by the gospel⁠—Since the time that Jesus Christ said, put up thy sword into its scabbard, Christians ought not to go to war.⁠—Christ suffered Peter to fall into an error in this matter, on purpose that, when He had put up Peter’s sword, it might remain no longer a doubt that war was prohibited, which, before that order, had been considered as allowable.”⁠—“I am persuaded,” says the Bishop of Llandaff, “that when the spirit of Christianity shall exert its proper influence over the minds of individuals, and especially over the minds of public men in their public capacities, over the minds of men constituting the councils of princes, from whence are the issues of peace and war⁠—when this happy period shall arrive, war will cease throughout the whole Christian world.”20 “War,” says the same acute prelate, “has practices and principles peculiar to itself, which but ill quadrate with the rule of moral rectitude and are quite abhorrent from the benignity of Christianity.”21 The emphatical declaration which I have already quoted for another purpose, is yet more distinct. The prohibition of war by our Divine Master, is plain, literal, and undeniable.22 Dr. Vicesimus Knox speaks in language equally specific:⁠—“Morality and Religion forbid war in its motives, conduct and consequences.”23

In an inquiry into the decisions of Christianity upon the question of war, we have to refer⁠—to the general tendency of the revelation; to the individual declarations of Jesus Christ; to his practice; to the sentiments and practices of his commissioned followers; to the opinions respecting its lawfulness which were held by their immediate converts; and to some other species of Christian evidence.

It is, perhaps, the capital error of those who have attempted to instruct others in the duties of morality, that they have not been willing to enforce the rules of the Christian Scriptures in their full extent. Almost every moralist pauses somewhere short of the point which they prescribe; and this pause is made at a greater or less distance from the Christian standard, in proportion to the admission, in a greater or less degree, of principles which they have superadded to the principles of the gospel. Few, however, supersede the laws of Christianity, without proposing some principle of “expediency,” some doctrine of “natural law,” some theory of “intrinsic decency and turpitude,” which they lay down as the true standard of moral judgment.⁠—They who reject truth are not likely to escape error. Having mingled with Christianity principles which it never taught, we are not likely to be consistent with truth, or with ourselves; and accordingly, he who seeks for direction from the professed teachers of morality finds his mind bewildered in conflicting theories, and his judgment embarrassed by contradictory instructions. But “wisdom is justified by all her children;” and she is justified, perhaps, by nothing more evidently than by the laws which