It forms no part of a Christian’s business to inquire why his religion forbids any given actions, although I know not that the inquiry is reprehensible. In the case of personal attack, possibly Christianity may decide, that if one of two men must be hurried from the world, of whom the first is so profligate as to assault the life of his fellow, and the other is so virtuous as to prefer the loss of life to the abandonment of Christian principles—it is more consistent with her will that the good should be transferred to his hoped felicity, than that the bad should be consigned to punishment. ↩
See Select Anecdotes, etc., by John Barclay, pp. 71–79. In this little volume I have found some illustrations of the policy of the principle which we maintain in the case of a personal attack. Barclay, the celebrated Apologist, was attacked by a highwayman. He made no other resistance than a calm expostulation. The felon dropped his presented pistol, and offered no farther violence. A Leonard Fell was assaulted by a highway robber, who plundered him of his money and his horse, and afterwards threatened to blow out his brains. Fell solemnly spoke to the robber on the wickedness of his life. The man was astonished:—he declared he would take neither his money nor his horse, and returned them both.—“If thine enemy hunger, feed him—for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head.” ↩
Clarkson. ↩
Oldmixon, Anno, 1708. ↩
Proud. ↩
Oldmixon. ↩
Clarkson, Life of Penn. ↩
“The dread of being destroyed by our enemies if we do not go to war with them, is a plain and unequivocal proof of our disbelief in the superintendence of Divine Providence.” —“The Lawfulness of Defensive War Impartially Considered; by a Member of the Church of England” ↩
Falkland’s Islands. ↩
2 Samuel 24:16. ↩
Psalm 120:7. ↩
Lord Clarendon—who, however, excepts those wars which are likely “to introduce as much benefit to the world, as damage and inconvenience to a part of it.” The morality of this celebrated man, also, seems thus to have been wrecked upon the rock of expediency. ↩
Johnson—Falkland’s Islands. ↩
Lord Clarendon’s Essays. ↩
Erasmus. ↩
Hall. ↩
William Law, A.M. ↩
Essays.—No. 19. Knox justly makes much exception to the applicability of these censures. ↩
Dr. Paley. ↩
There is something very unmanly and cowardly in some of the maxims of this law of honor. How unlike the fortitude, the manliness of real courage, are the motives of him who fights a duel! He accepts a challenge, commonly, because he is afraid to refuse it. The question with him is, whether he fears more, a pistol or the world’s dread frown; and his conduct is determined by the preponderating influence of one of these objects of fear. If I am told that he probably feels no fear of death; I answer, that if he fears not the death of a duelist, his principles have sunk to that abyss of depravity, whence nothing but the interposition of Omnipotence is likely to reclaim them. ↩
This inferiority will probably be found less conspicuous in the private than in his superiors. Employment in different situations, or in foreign countries, and the consequent acquisition of information, often make the private soldier superior in intelligence to laborers and mechanics; a cause of superiority which, of course, does not similarly operate amongst men of education.
We would here beg the reader to bear in his recollection, the limitations which are stated in the preface, respecting the application of any apparent severity in our remarks. ↩
I would scarcely refer to the monstrous practice of impressing seamen, because there are many who deplore and many who condemn it. Whether this also be necessary to war, I know not:—probably it is necessary; and if it be, I would ask no other evidence against the system that requires it. Such an invasion of the natural rights of man, such a monstrous assumption of arbitrary power, such a violation of every principle of justice, cannot possibly be necessary to any system of which Christianity approves. ↩
Life of Bishop Watson. ↩
All sober men allow this to be true in relation to the influence of those Novels which decorate a profligate character with objects of attraction. They allow that our complacency with these subjects abates our hatred of the accompanying vices. And the same also is true in relation to war; with the difference, indeed, which is likely to exist between the influence of the vices of fiction and that of the vices of real life. ↩
Duties of Men in Society. ↩
Acts 5:29. ↩
Murray’s Inquiries Respecting the Progress of Society. ↩
Colophon
An Inquiry Into the Accordancy of War with the Principles of Christianity
was published in 1892 by
Jonathan Dymond.
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