[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.”[127] The chief causes which induce men to massacre in all loyalty thousands of their brothers and to expose their own people to the most terrible misery, are the ambitions and jealousies of princes and their ministers.[128] Similar views are expressed in the great Encyclopédie:—“La guerre est le plus terrible des fléaux qui détruisent l’espèce humaine: elle n’épargne pas même les vainqueurs; la plus heureuse est funeste…. Ce ne sont plus aujourd’hui les peuples qui déclarent la guerre, c’est la cupidité des rois qui leur fait prendre les armes; c’est l’indigence qui les met aux mains de leurs sujets.”[129]