doctrines of peace to the extreme limits of non-resistance.111 But, as we have noticed, these peaceful tendencies only formed a passing phase in the history of Reformation, and were left to the care of sectarians.
108 Perry, History of the English Church, First Period, pp. 455, 467.
109 Green, History of the English People, ii. 93.
110 Erasmus, Adagia, iv. 1, col. 893 sqq.
111 Farrer, Military Manners and Customs, p. 185.
Among these the Quakers are the most important. By virtue of various passages in the Old and the New Testament,112 they contend that all warfare, whatever be its peculiar features, circumstances, or pretexts, is wholly at variance with the Christian religion. It is always the duty of Christians to obey their Master’s high and holy law—to suffer wrong, to return good for evil, to love their enemies. War is also inconsistent with the Christian principle that human life is sacred, and that death is followed by infinite consequences. Since man is destined for eternity, the future welfare of a single individual is of greater importance than the merely temporal prosperity of a whole nation. When cutting short the days of their neighbour and transmitting him, prepared or unprepared, to the awful realities of an everlasting state, Christians take upon themselves a most unwarrantable responsibility, unless such an action is expressly sanctioned by their divine Master, as was the case among the Israelites. In the New Testament there is no such sanction, hence it must be concluded that, under the Christian dispensation, it is utterly unlawful for one man to kill another, under whatever circumstances of expediency or provocation the deed may be committed. And a Christian who fights by the command of his prince, and in behalf of his country, not only commits sin in his own person, but aids and abets the national transgression.113
112 Isaiah, ch. ii. sqq. Micah, iv. 1 sqq. St. Matthew, v. 38 sqq.; xxvi. 52. St. Luke, vi. 27 sqq. St. John, xviii. 36. Romans, xii. 19 sqq. 1 Peter, iii. 9.
113 Gurney, Views & Practices of the Society of Friends, p. 375 sqq.
It must be added that views similar to these are also found independently of any particular form of sectarianism. According to Dr. Wayland, all wars, defensive as well as offensive, are contrary to the revealed will of God, aggression from a foreign nation calling not for retaliation and injury, but rather for special kindness and good-will.114 Theodore Parker, the Congregational minister, looks upon war as a sin, a corrupter of public morals, a practical denial of Christianity, a violation of God's eternal love.115 W. Stokes, the Baptist, observes that Christianity cannot sanction war, whether offensive or defensive, because war is an “immeasurable evil, by hurling unnumbered myriads of our fellow-men to a premature judgment and endless despair.”116 Moreover, those who compare the state of opinion during the last years with that of former periods, cannot fail to observe a marked progress of a sentiment antagonistic to war in the various sections of the Christian Church.117 Yet, speaking generally, the orthodox are still of the same opinion as Sir James Turner, who declared that “those who condemn the profession or art of soldiery, smell rank of Anabaptism and Quakery”;118 and war is in our days, as it was in those of Erasmus,119 so much sanctioned by authority and custom, that it is deemed impious to bear testimony against it. The duties which compulsory military service imposes upon the male population of most Christian countries presuppose that a Christian should have no scruples about taking part in any war waged by the State, and are recognised as binding by the clergy of those countries. With reference to the Church of England, Dr. Thomas Arnold asks, “Did it become a Christian Church to make no other official declaration of its sentiments concerning war, than by saying that Christian men might lawfully engage in it?”120
114 Wayland, Elements of Moral Science, pp. 375, 379.
115 Parker, Sermon of War, p. 23.
116 Stokes, All War inconsistent with the Christian Religion, p. 41.
117 Cf. Gibb, loc. cit. p. 81.
118 Turner, Pallas Armata, p. 369.
119 Erasmus, op. cit. iv. 1. 1. col. 894.
120 Arnold, On the Church, p. 136.
The protest against war which exercised perhaps the widest influence on public opinion came from a school of moralists whose tendencies were not only anti-orthodox, but distinctly hostile to the most essential dogmas of Christian theology. Bayle, in his Dictionary, calls Erasmus’ essay against war one of the most beautiful dissertations ever written.121 He observes that the more we consider the inevitable consequences of war, the more we feel disposed to detest those who are the causes of it.122 Its usual fruits may, indeed, “make those tremble who undertake or advise it, to prevent evils which, perhaps, may never happen and which, at the worst, would often be much less than those which necessarily follow a rupture.”123 To Voltaire war is an “infernal enterprise,” the strangest feature of which is that “every chief of the ruffians has his colours consecrated, and solemnly prays to God before he goes to destroy his neighbour.”124 He asks what the Church has done to suppress this crime. Bourdaloue preached against impurity, but what sermon did he ever direct against the murder, rapine, brigandage, and universal rage, which desolate the world? “Miserable physicians of souls, you declaim for five quarters of an hour against the mere pricks of a pin, and say no word on the curse which tears us into a thousand pieces.”125 Voltaire admits that under certain circumstances war is an inevitable curse, but rebukes Montesquieu for saying that natural defence sometimes involves the necessity of attack, when a nation perceives that a longer peace would place another nation in a position to destroy it.126 Such a war, he observes, is as illegitimate as possible:—“ It is to go and kill your neighbour for fear that your neighbour, who does not attack you, should be in a condition to attack you; that is to say, you must run the risk of ruining your country, in the hope of ruining without reason some other country; this is, to be sure, neither fair nor useful.”