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

and this belief is sufficiently confident to induce him to publish an essay which will probably be the subject of contempt to some men, and of ridicule to others.

But ridicule and contempt are not potent reasoners.

“Christianity can only operate as an alternative. By the mild diffusion of its light and influence, the minds of men are insensibly prepared to perceive and correct the enormities, which folly, or wickedness, or accident have introduced into their public establishments.”

War, therefore, becomes familiarized to all our thoughts, and interwoven with all our associations. We have never inquired whether these things should be; the question does not even suggest itself.

We acquiesce in it, as we acquiesce in the rising of the sun, without any other idea than that it is a part of the ordinary process of the world.

And how are we to feel disapprobation of a system that we do not examine, and of the nature of which we do not think?

For I do not think the influence of habit in the perversion or extinction of our moral principles, is in any other thing so conspicuous or deplorable as in the subject before us.

They who are shocked at a single murder in the highway, hear with indifference of the murder of a thousand on the field.

They whom the idea of a single corpse would thrill with terror, contemplate that of heaps of human carcasses, mangled by human hands, with frigid indifference.

We are carrying our benevolence to the Indies, but what becomes of it in Russia or at Leipzig? We are laboring to save a few lives from the gallows, but where is our solicitude to save them on the field?

Life is life, wheresoever it be sacrificed, and has everywhere equal claims to our regard.

I am not now inquiring whether war is right, but whether we do not regard its calamities with an indifference with which we regard no others, and whether that indifference does not make us acquiesce in evils and in miseries which we should otherwise prevent …

and nations thus surround themselves with a sort of artificial tentacula, which they throw wide in quest of irritation, and by which they are stimulated to revenge, by every touch of accident or inadvertency.

He that is easily offended will also easily offend.

The man who is always on the alert to discover trespasses on his honor or his rights, never fails to quarrel with his neighbors. Such a person may be dreaded as a torpedo. We may fear, but we shall not love him;

We are at no pains to appear pacific towards the offender; our remonstrance is a threat; and the nation, which would give satisfaction to an inquiry, will give no other answer to a menace than a menace in return.

At length we begin to fight, not because we are aggrieved, but because we are angry.

The object of the haughtiness and petulance which one nation uses towards another, is of course to produce some benefit; to awe into compliance with its demands, or into forbearance from aggression.

Pride may declaim against these sentiments; but my business is not with pride, but with reason; and I think reason determines that it would be more wise, and religion that it would be less wicked, to diminish our punctiliousness and irritability.

If nations fought only when they could not be at peace, there would be very little fighting in the world.

The wars that are waged for “insults to flags,” and an endless train of similar motives, are perhaps generally attributable to the irritability of our pride. We are at no pains to appear pacific towards the offender; our remonstrance is a threat;

The rational and immortal being, who raises the edifice of his fame on simple bravery, has chosen but an unworthy and a frail foundation.

Separate bravery from motives and purposes, and what will remain but that which is possessed by a mastiff or a gamecock?

All just, all rational, and we will venture to affirm, all permanent reputation, refers to the mind or to virtue; and what connection has animal power or animal hardihood with intellect or goodness? I do not decry courage.

If the war is a national calamity, and was foreseen to be such, still he fights for his country. If his judgment has decided against the war, and against its justice or expediency, still he fights for his country. He is always virtuous.

If he but uses a bayonet, he is always a patriot.

To sacrifice our lives for the liberties, and laws, and religion of our native land, are undoubtedly high-sounding words:—but who are they that will do it? Who is it that will sacrifice his life for his country? Will the senator who supports a war?

that being who alone possesses reason to direct his conduct, who alone is required to love his fellows, and who alone hopes in futurity for repose and peace. All this seems wonderful, and may reasonably humiliate us.

The powers which elevate us above the rest of the creation, we have employed in attaining to preeminence of outrage and malignity.

It may properly be a subject of wonder, that the arguments which are brought to justify a custom such as war receive so little investigation. It must be a studious ingenuity of mischief, which could devise a practice more calamitous or horrible;

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.

Some men seem to talk of the laws of nature, as if nature were a legislatress who had sat and framed laws for the government of mankind.

Nature makes no laws; a law implies a legislator; and there is no legislator upon the principles of human duty, but God.

If, by the “law of nature,” is meant anything of which the sanctions or obligations are different from those of revelation, it is obvious that we have set up a moral system of our own, and in opposition to that which has been established by …

But these were the people who possessed their country in security, whilst those around them were trembling for their existence. This was a land of peace, whilst every other was a land of war.

The conclusion is inevitable, although it is extraordinary⁠—they were in no need of arms because they would not use them.

These Indians were sufficiently ready to commit outrages upon other states, and often visited them with desolation and slaughter;

and that although these duties may be binding upon us when the world shall become purer, yet that we must now accommodate ourselves to the state of things as they are. This is to say that in a land of assassins, assassination would be right.

If no one begins to reform his practice, until others have begun before him, reformation will never be begun.

If apostles, or martyrs, or reformers had “accommodated themselves to the existing state of things,” where had now been Christianity? The business of reformation belongs to him who sees that reformation is required. The world has no other human means of amendment.

“War does more harm to the morals of men than even to their property and persons.”

“It is a temporary repeal of all the principles of virtue.”

“There is not a virtue of Gospel goodness but has its deathblow from war.”

The slaughter of his fellow men should be dreadful in execution and in thought. But what is his aversion or reluctance? He feels none—it is not even a subject of seriousness to him.

He butchers his fellow candidates for heaven, as a woodman fells a coppice; with as little reluctance and as little regret.

Those who will compute the tendency of this familiarity with human destruction, cannot doubt whether it will be pernicious to the moral character.

These principles are shaken; an inroad is made upon their integrity, and it is an inroad that makes after inroads the more easy. Mankind do not generally resist the influence of habit.

If we rob and shoot those who are “enemies” today, we are in some degree prepared to shoot and rob those who are not enemies tomorrow.

The strength of the restraining moral principle is impaired. Law may, indeed, still restrain us from violence; but the power and efficiency of principle is diminished.

It were an infelicitous defence to say, that soldiers do not become idle until the war is closed or they leave the army.—

To keep men out of idleness by employing them in cutting other men’s limbs and bodies, is at least an extraordinary economy; and the profligacy still remains; for unhappily if war keeps soldiers busy, it does not keep them good.

By a peculiar and unhappy coincidence, the moral evil attendant upon the profession is perpetuated by the after system of half-pay. We have no concern with this system on political or pecuniary considerations;

The very nature of unconditional obedience implies the relinquishment of the use of the reasoning powers. Little more is required of the soldier than that he be obedient and brave.

His obedience is that of an animal, which is moved by a goad or a bit, without judgment or volition of his own; and his bravery is that of a mastiff, which fights whatever mastiff others put before him.

—It is obvious that in such agency, the intellect and the understanding have little part. Now I think that this is important.

… a stated dress, and of a stated color, ranged, rank and file, in the attitude of obedience, turning or walking at the word of another, now changing the position of a limb and now altering the angle of a foot, I feel humiliation and shame.

I feel humiliation and shame when I think of the capacities and the prospects of man, at seeing him thus drilled into obsequiousness and educated into machinery.

I do not know whether I shall be charged with indulging in idle sentiment or idler affectation. If I hold unusual language upon the subject, let it be remembered that the subject is itself unusual.

Take away the influence and the gloss of public opinion from the situation of a soldier, and what should we call it? We should call it a state of insufferable degradation; of pitiable slavery.

But public opinion, although it may influence notions, cannot alter things.

Whatever may be our notion of the soldier’s situation, he has indisputably resigned both his moral and his natural liberty to the government of despotic power. He has added to ordinary slavery, the slavery of the conscience;

But whatever is deficient in the degree of evil, is probably more than compensated by its extent.

The influence is like that of a continual and noxious vapor; we neither regard nor perceive it, but it secretly undermines the moral health.

Everyone knows that vice is contagious. The depravity of one man has always a tendency to deprave his neighbors;

Such principles and virtue will oppose, at any rate, little resistance to temptation. An abhorrence of wickedness is more than an outwork of the moral citadel.

He that does not hate vice has opened a passage for its entrance.

I do not think that those who feel an interest in the virtue and the happiness of the world will regard the animosity of party and the restlessness of resentment which are produced by a war, as trifling evils.

Christianity cannot be flourishing under circumstances like these. The more effectually we are animated to war, the more nearly we extinguish the dispositions of our religion.

War and Christianity are like the opposite ends of a balance, of which one is depressed by the elevation of the other.

These are the consequences which make war dreadful to a state. Slaughter and devastation are sufficiently terrible, but their collateral evils are their greatest. It is the immoral feeling that war diffuses—it is the deprivation of principle, which forms the mass of its mischief.

These are the consequences which make war dreadful to a state.

Slaughter and devastation are sufficiently terrible, but their collateral evils are their greatest.

It is the immoral feeling that war diffuses—it is the deprivation of principle, which forms the mass of its mischief.

War is a game, that were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.

A king sells his subjects as a farmer sells his cattle; and sends them to destroy a people, whom, if they had been higher bidders, he would perhaps have sent them to defend.

That kings should do this may grieve, but it cannot surprise us: avarice has been as unprincipled in humbler life; the possible malignity of individual wickedness is perhaps without any limit.

The idea of two communities of Christians, separated perhaps by a creek, at the same moment begging their common Father to assist them in reciprocal destruction, is an idea of horror to which I know no parallel.

Lord, assist us to slaughter our enemies: This is our petition.⁠—“Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” This is the petition of Christ.

It is certain that of two contending communities, both cannot be in the right.

To attempt to pursue the consequences of war through all her ramifications of evil, were, however, both endless and vain.

It is a moral gangrene which diffuses its humors through the whole political and social system.

To expose its mischief is to exhibit all evil; for their is no evil which it does not occasion, and it has much that is peculiar to itself.

“Did we not straitly command you,” said the rulers, “that ye should not teach in this name?” The answer which they made is in point:—“We ought to obey God rather than men.” And this system they continued to pursue.

If Caesar had ordered one of the apostles to be enrolled in his legions, does anyone believe that he would have served?

But those who suppose that obedience in all things is required, or that responsibility in political affairs is transferred from the subject to the sovereign, reduce themselves to a great dilemma.

that it is the business of governments to consider what is good for the community, and that, in these cases, the duty of the subject is merged in the will of the sovereign.

Considerations like these are, I believe, often voluntarily permitted to become opiates of the conscience.

I have no part, it is said, in the counsels of the government, and am not therefore responsible for its crimes. We are, indeed, not responsible for the crimes of our rulers, but we are responsible for our own;

Considerations like these are, I believe, often voluntarily permitted to become opiates of the conscience. I have no part, it is said, in the counsels of the government, and am not therefore responsible for its crimes.

We are, indeed, not responsible for the crimes of our rulers, but we are responsible for our own; and the crimes of our rulers are our own; if, whilst we believe them to be crimes, we promote them by our cooperation.

“It is at all times,” says Gisborne, “the duty of an Englishman, steadfastly to decline obeying any orders of his superiors, which is conscience should tell him were in any degree impious or unjust.”

Let them then be willing to avow their opinions and to defend them. Neither let them be contented with words, if more than words, if suffering also, is required.

It is only by the unyielding perseverance of good that corruption can be extirpated.

If you believe that Jesus Christ has prohibited slaughter, let not the opinion or the commands of a world induce you to join it.