All this is explicit. The evidence of the following facts, is, however, yet more determinate and satisfactory. Some of the arguments which, at the present day, are brought against the advocates of peace, were then urged against these early Christians; and these arguments they examined and repelled. This indicates investigation and inquiry, and manifests that their belief of the unlawfulness of war was not a vague opinion, hastily admitted, and loosely floating amongst them; but that it was the result of deliberate examination, and a consequent firm conviction that Christ had forbidden it. Tertullian says, “Though the soldiers came to John and received a certain form to be observed, yet Jesus Christ, by disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier afterwards; for custom never sanctions any unlawful act.” “Can a soldier’s life be lawful,” says he, in another work, “when Christ has pronounced that he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword? Can anyone, who possesses the peaceable doctrine of the gospel, be a soldier, when it is his duty not so much as to go to law? And shall he, who is not to revenge his own wrongs, be instrumental in bringing others into chains, imprisonment, torture, death?”—So that the very same arguments which are brought in defence of war at the present day, were brought against the Christians sixteen hundred years ago; and, sixteen hundred years ago, they were repelled by these faithful contenders for the purity of our religion. It is remarkable, too, that Tertullian appeals to the precepts from the mount, in proof of those principles on which this Essay has been insisting:—that the dispositions which the precepts inculcated are not compatible with war, and that war, therefore, is irreconcilable with Christianity.
If it be possible, a still stronger evidence of the primitive belief is contained in the circumstance, that some of the Christian authors declared that the refusal of the Christian to bear arms, was a fulfillment of ancient prophecy. The peculiar strength of this evidence consists in this—that the fact of a refusal to bear arms is assumed as notorious and unquestioned. Irenaeus, who lived about anno 180, affirms that the prophecy of Isaiah, which declared that men should turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, had been fulfilled in his time; “for the Christians,” says he “have changed their swords and their lances into instruments of peace, and they know not now how to fight.” Justin Martyr, his contemporary, writes—“That the prophecy is fulfilled, you have good reason to believe, for we, who in times past killed one another, do not now fight with our enemies.” Tertullian, who lived later, says: “You must confess that the prophecy has been accomplished, as far as the practice of every individual is concerned, to whom it is applicable.”47
It has been sometimes said, that the motive which influenced the early Christians to refuse to engage in war, consisted in the idolatry which was connected with the Roman armies. One motive this idolatry unquestionably afforded; but it is obvious, from the quotations which we have given, that their belief of the unlawfulness of fighting, independent of any question of idolatry, was an insuperable objection to engaging in war. Their words are explicit: “I cannot fight if I die.”—“I am a Christian, and, therefore, I cannot fight.”—“Christ,” says Tertullian, “by disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier;” and Peter was not about to fight in the armies of idolatry. So entire was their conviction of the incompatibility of war with our religion, that they would not even be present at the gladiatorial fights, “lest,” says Theophilus, “we should become partakers of the murders committed there.” Can anyone believe that they who would not even witness a battle between two men, would themselves fight in a battle between armies? And the destruction of a gladiator, it should be remembered, was authorized by the state as much as the destruction of enemies in war.
It is therefore, indisputable, that the Christians who lived nearest to the time of our Saviour, believed, with undoubting confidence, that He had unequivocally forbidden war—that they openly avowed this belief, and that, in support of it, they were willing to sacrifice, and did sacrifice, their fortunes and their lives.
Christians, however, afterwards became soldiers. And when?—When their general fidelity to Christianity became relaxed:—when, in other respects, they violated its principles;—when they had begun “to dissemble,” and “to falsify their word,” and “to cheat,”—when “Christian casuists” had persuaded them that they might sit at meat in the idol’s temple; when Christians accepted even the priesthoods of idolatry. In a word, they became soldiers, when they had ceased to be Christians.
The departure from the original faithfulness was, however, not suddenly general. Like every other corruption, war obtained by degrees. During the first two hundred years, not a Christian soldier is upon record. In the third century, when Christianity became partially corrupted, Christian soldiers were common. The number increased with the increase of the general profligacy; until at last, in the fourth century, Christians became soldiers without hesitation, and, perhaps, without remorse. Here and there, however, an ancient father still lifted up his voice for peace; but these, one after another, dropping from the world, the tenet that war is unlawful, ceased at length to be a tenet of the church.
Such was the origin of the present belief in the lawfulness of war. It began in unfaithfulness, was nurtured by profligacy, and was confirmed by general corruption. We seriously, then, and solemnly invite the conscientious Christian of the present day, to consider these things. Had the professors of Christianity continued in the purity and faithfulness of their forefathers, we should now have believed that war was forbidden; and Europe, many long centuries ago, would have reposed
