Ameer Ali, Ethics of Islam, p. 26 sqq.
25 Ibid. p. 7. Idem, Life and Teachings of Mohammed, p. 280.
26 Poole, Studies in Mohammedanism, p. 226.
27 Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 314 sq.
The principles of forgiveness had also advocates in Greece and Rome. In one of the Platonic dialogues, Socrates says, “We ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him”; though he wisely adds that “this opinion has never been held, and never will be held, by any considerable number of persons.”28 The Stoics strongly condemned anger as unnatural and unreasonable. “Mankind is born for mutual assistance, anger for mutual ruin.”29 “Anger is a crime of the mind; … it often is even more criminal than the faults with which it is angry.”30 He is the best and purest “who pardons others as if he sinned himself daily, but avoids sinning as if he never pardoned.”31 “If any one is angry with you, meet his anger by returning benefits for it.”32 “The cynic loves those who beat him.”33
28 Plato, Crito, p. 49.
29 Seneca, De ira, i. 5.
30 Ibid. i. 16; ii. 6.
31 Pliny, Epistolæ, ix. 22 (viii. 22).
32 Seneca, op. cit. ii. 34.
33 Epictetus, Dissertationes, iii. 22, 54.
Forgiveness of enemies is thus by no means an exclusively Christian tenet, although it has never before or after been inculcated with the same emphasis as it was by Jesus. “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”34 When St. Peter asked, “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?” Jesus replied, “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven,”35—that is, as often as he repeats the offence. It would seem that Jesus by these sentences expressly forbade men to avenge themselves, or even to feel resentment on their own behalf; and so also he was understood by St. Paul.36
34 St. Matthew, v. 44. Cf. ibid. v. 39 sq.; vi. 14 sq.; St. Luke, vi. 27 sqq.; xvii. 3 sq.; St. Mark, xi. 25 sq.
35 St. Matthew, xviii. 21 sq.
36 Romans, xii. 19 sqq.; 1 Thessalonians, v. 14 sq.; Colossians, iii. 12 sq.
The rule of retaliation and the rule of forgiveness, however, are not so radically opposed to each other as they appear to be. What the latter condemns is, in reality, not every kind of resentment, but non-moral resentment; not impartial indignation, but personal hatred. It prohibits revenge, but not punishment. According to the Laws of Manu, crime was so indispensably to be followed by punishment, that if the king pardoned a thief or a perpetrator of violence, instead of slaying or striking him, the guilt fell on the king;37 and if Lao-tsze was an enemy to the infliction of any kind of suffering, it was because he held that in a well-governed State the necessity for punishment could not arise, as crime would cease to exist.38 The Chinese book, Merits and Errors Scrutinised, which regards it as a merit to refrain from avenging an injury, adds that, “if a man should omit to avenge the injuries of his parents, it would become an error.”39 Jesus was certainly not free from righteous indignation. It does not appear that he ever forgave the legalists who sinned against the kingdom of God, and he told his disciples that, if a brother who had trespassed against his brother neglected to hear the church, he should be looked upon as a heathen and a publican.40 Christian writers have laid much stress upon the circumstance that Jesus enjoined men to forgive their own enemies, but not to abstain from resenting injuries done to others. According to Thomas Aquinas, “the good bear with the wicked to this extent, that, so far as it is proper to do so, they patiently endure at their hands the injuries done to themselves; but they do not bear with them to the extent of enduring the injuries done to God and their neighbours. For Chrysostom says, ‘For it is praiseworthy to be patient under one’s own wrongs, but the height of impiety to dissemble injuries done to God.’ ”41 Practically, at least, Christianity has not altered the validity of the Aristotelian rule that anger admits not only of an excess, but of a defect, and that we ought to feel angry at certain things.42 As Plutarch says, we even think those worthy of hatred who are not vexed at hateful individuals; and we can sympathise with the man who, hearing somebody praise Charillus, king of Sparta, for his gentleness, replied, “How can Charillus be good, who is not harsh even to the bad?”43 Moreover, the belief in a transcendental retributive justice, in an ultimate punishment of badness, which we meet with in Taouism,44 Brahmanism, Buddhism,45 Christianity,46 side by side with the doctrine of forgiveness, is based upon the demand that wrong should be resented.
37 Laws of Manu, viii. 316, 346 sq. Cf. Gautama, xii. 45; Âpastamba, i. 9. 25. 5.
38 Douglas, Confucianism and Taouism, p. 204.
39 ‘Merits and Errors scrutinised,’ in Indo-Chinese Gleaner, iii. 153.
40 St. Matthew, xviii. 15 sqq.
41 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, ii.-ii. 108. 1. 2. Cf. Lactantius, De ira Dei, 17.