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

study, and yet these men engage in war without any doubt of its lawfulness. All this is true; and it is true also, that some good men have expressly inculcated the lawfulness of war; and it is true also, that the articles of the Church of England specifically assert it. But what, if it should have come to pass, that “blindness in part, hath happened unto Israel!”

What is the argument? That good men have engaged in war, and therefore that Christianity allows it. They who satisfy themselves with such reasoning, should bear in mind that he who voluntarily passes over the practice of the first two centuries of Christianity, and attempts to defend himself by the practice of after and darker ages, has obviously no other motive than that he finds his religion, when vitiated and corrupt, more suitable to his purpose than it was in the days of its purity. This state of imperfection and impurity has diffused an influence upon the good, as upon the bad. I question not that some Christians of the present day who defend war, believe they act in accordance with their religion; just as I question not that many, who zealously bore fagots to the stake of the Christian martyrs, believed so too. The time has been, when those who killed good men thought “they did God service.” But let the succeeding declaration be applied by our present objectors⁠—“These things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father nor Me.”50 Here, then, appears to be our error⁠—that we do not estimate the conduct of men by the standard of the gospel, but that we reduce the standard of the gospel to the conduct of men. That good men should fail to conform to the perfect purity of Christianity, or to perceive it, need not be wondered, for we have sufficient examples of it. Good men in past ages allowed many things as permitted by Christianity, which we condemn, and shall forever condemn. In the present day there are many questions of duty on which men of piety disagree. If their authority be rejected by us on other points of practice, why is it to determine the question of war? Especially why do we insist on their decisions, when they differ in their decisions themselves? If good men have allowed the lawfulness of war, good men have also denied it. We are therefore again referred to the simple evidence of religion; an evidence which it will always be found wise to admit, and dangerous to question.

There is, however, one argument brought against us, which if it be just, precludes at once all question upon the subject:⁠—That a distinction is to be made between rules which apply to us as individuals, and rules which apply to us as subjects of the state; and that the pacific injunctions of Christ from the mount, and all the other kindred commands and prohibitions of the Christian Scriptures, have no reference to our conduct as members of the political body. This is the argument to which the greatest importance is attached by the advocates of war, and by which thinking men are chiefly induced to acquiesce in its lawfulness. In reality, some of those who think most acutely upon the subject, acknowledge that the peaceable, forbearing, forgiving dispositions of Christianity, are absolutely obligatory upon individuals in their full extent; and this acknowledgment I would entreat the reader to bear in his recollection.

Now it is obvious that the proof of the rectitude of this distinction, must be expected of those who make it. General rules are laid down by Christianity, of which, in some cases, the advocate of war denies the applicability. He, therefore, is to produce the reason and the authority for exception. Now we would remind him that general rules are binding, unless their inapplicability can be clearly shown. We would remind him that the general rules in question, are laid down by the commissioned ministers of Jesus Christ, and by Jesus Christ himself; and we would recommend him, therefore, to hesitate before he institutes exceptions to those rules, upon any authority inferior to the authority which made them.

The foundation for the distinction between the duties of Individuals, and those of Communities, must, we suppose, be sought in one of these two positions:

1. That as no law exists, of general authority amongst nations, by which one state is protected from the violence of another, it is necessary that each independent community should protect itself; and that the security of a nation cannot sometimes be maintained otherwise than by war.

2. That as the general utility and expediency of actions is the foundation of their moral qualities, and as it is sometimes most conducive to general utility and expediency that there should be war, war is, therefore, sometimes lawful.

The first of these positions will probably be thus enforced. If an individual suffers aggression, there is a Power to which he can apply that is above himself and above the aggressor; a power by which the bad passions of those around him are restrained, or by which their aggressions are punished. But amongst nations there is no acknowledged superior or common arbitrator.⁠—Even if there were, there is no way in which its decisions could be enforced, but by the sword. War, therefore, is the only means which one nation possesses of protecting itself from the aggression of another.

This, certainly, is plausible reasoning; but it happens to this argument as to many others, that it assumes that as established, which has not been proved, and upon the proof of which the truth of the whole argument depends. It assumes, That the reason why an individual is not permitted to use violence, is, that the laws will use it for him. And in this the fallacy of the position consists; for the foundation of the duty of forbearance in private life, is not that the laws will punish aggression, but that Christianity requires forbearance. Undoubtedly, if the existence