Holy war

“ At a later period, it became necessary in the interests of order to temper the result of this excitement by traditions in which those of the Faithful who died in the exercise of a peaceful, honest profession were declared to be witnesses to the Faith as well as those who were slain in battle against the enemies of God,—traditions in which the real and greater holy war was described as the struggle against evil passions. ”

“ What thou sayest is in direct reproach of holy church, which has frequently called in the assistance of mortal force and human weapons to put down the infidel, to crush the wrong-doer, and to restore that peace which can only owe her continued existence to the presence ever of a just readiness for war. ”

“ for if ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence. ”

“ Note, Though our holy religion teaches us to be for peace, yet it does not forbid us to provide for war. ”

“ And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:
And insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? ”

“ That as there is a world of wicked, malicious spirits that fight against Christ and his church, and all particular believers, so there is a world of holy, blessed spirits engaged and employed for them. In reference to our war with devils, we may take abundance of comfort from our communion with angels. ”

“ But is it not time for Christians to examine and ascertain if war is tolerated in the gospel of peace before they join in festivities to celebrate its bloody feats? How would a pagan be astonished if he had been taught the meek, lowly, and forgiving spirit and principles of the gospel, without knowing the practice of Christians, to see a host of men, professing to be influenced by these blessed principles, marshaled in all the pomp of military parade, threatening destruction to their fellow-mortals! ”

“ You talk of Divine guidance and the sanctification of life. How do you respect life and the teaching of Jesus Christ? Jesus said, 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.' You, His professed followers, bless war and its 109 orgies of hate. You stand by hypocritically thanking God for your own sanctity, whilst Christians drench battlefields with the blood of Christians. The abolition of war is the reform to which you should all bend your lives and direct your prayers. ”

“ We are come here this evening to offer our earnest prayers and supplications to God for His help in this grievous and dangerous crisis of our national life, to entreat Him to grant the victory to our King and his Allies, and to deliver our nation, our Empire, and the world from the violence and oppression with which they are threatened by the enemy. In order that we may do so aright, it is necessary we should realize distinctly what is God’s special concern with the war, and what is our own relation to Him in respect to it. ”

“ It was indeed the bitterest irony of all, that this War, which claimed at the outset to be waged for the highest religious objects, for the glory of God and for the highest interests of His Church, should be signalized ere long by a more shameless treading under foot of all laws human and divine, disgraced by worse and wickeder outrages against God, and against man, the image of God, than probably any war which modern Christendom has seen. ”

“ But you also charge the poor Monks & Religious with being the causes of War: while you acquit & flatter the Alexanders & Caesars, the Lewis's & Fredericks: who alone are its causes & its actors. But the Religion of Jesus, Forgiveness of Sin, can never be the cause of a War nor of a single Martyrdom. ”

“ How many millions of Christians are now armed and equipped to destroy their fellow-Christians? Who are the men in Europe crying out against war? Who wishes to have the nations disarmed? Is it the church? No; it is the men who do not believe in what they call this religion of peace. When there is a war, and when they make a few thousand widows and orphans, when they strew the plain with dead patriots, then Christians assemble in their churches and sing "Te Deum Laudamus" to God. ”

“ Every page of the christian scriptures, whether you read those parts of the Old Testament which have a reference to christianity, or the New, speaks of little else but peace and concord; and yet the whole life of the greater portion of christians is employed in nothing so much as the concerns of war. It is really more than brutal ferocity which can neither be broken in, nor mitigated in its violence, by so many concurrent circumstances. ”

“ Let, then, no envious enemy injure our happiness, and, after the destruction of the impious power of the tyrants by the might of God our Saviour, let not the spirit of evil overwhelm the divine law with blasphemies: for to me far worse than any war or battle is the civil war of the Church of God--yea, far more fearful than the wars which have waged without. ”

“ Who, indeed, can refrain from lamenting another pernicious kind of sacrilege, an anthropomorphism, yet more frequent,—that of making Christian temples resound with prayers for victory over our enemies, and thanksgiving for their defeat? Assuredly such a ritual as this is not taken from the New Testament.—Ibid., Discourse of Natural Theology, Note VIII.
War is on its last legs; and a universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence of civilization over barbarism, of liberal governments over feudal forms. ”

“ If half of the zeal and passion, half of the outpouring of life and treasure, of organization and efficiency, that the State has put into this war could be thrown into the cause of the Kingdom and of the eternal verities, the world would soon be won. If Christians would but follow Christ, war, as an unbelievably brutal and barbarous anachronism, like its former savage contemporaries of slavery, the burning of witches, and the torture of the Inquisition, would be forever done away. ”

“ What will secure this, except the realisation of common membership in the Kingdom of God, and in the Christian Church, its herald and earnest?
And yet the Church we know is not only divided but at war within itself. This, the Creation of God in Christ, is not more free from strife and faction than the nations, which are natural growths. If grace fails, how can nature succeed? Why should we expect the nations of the world to be at peace, when the sections of the Church are at war? ”

“ When casting a retrospective glance over the annals of the middle ages, we are particularly grieved to see sanguinary wars undertaken and carried on in the name of a religion of peace, whilst we can scarcely find an example of a religious war among the ancients and under the laws of paganism. [262] We must believe that modern nations and those of antiquity have, and had the same passions; but, amongst the ancients, religion entered less deeply into the heart of man or into the spirit of social institutions. ”

“ For the present, and so long as there are living witnesses of the great war of sections, there will be people who will not be consoled for the loss of a cause which they believed to be holy. As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man. ”

“ But now, with the gospel open in every one’s hands, Papists and Protestants make open war against every divine virtue, which can unite them with the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world; I say, against every divine virtue of the Lamb of God, for these are the enemies which Christian war conquers. For there is not a virtue of gospel-goodness, but has its death-blow from it. ”

“ Penitent Christians may weep and mourn with propriety for their own sins and the sins of the nations, with a hearty desire not only to forsake their own iniquities, but that the nations may be brought to confess and forsake their sins and turn from them to the living God. It is true that war is a judgment in God’s providence. ”

“ But to enter an army with such views would be to belie the very oath of obedience which they take. Besides, who could execute the martyrs and be innocent? In this way all might become martyrs, and the army be annihilated.
But if war does not admit the free exercise of conscience on Christian principles, then it is criminal for Christians to become soldiers, and the principles of war must be inconsistent with the principles of Christianity. ”

“ Marching in parades and processions with high floating banners, flags, and sacred images at the sound of drums and praying monks hysterical multitudes called for preparedness in the cause of the holiest of wars,—the war of Christ against the infidel. ”

“ We charge, therefore, the Catholics of the whole world to approach the throne of Grace and Mercy, each and all of them, and more especially the clergy, whose duty furthermore it will be to make in every parish, as their Bishops shall direct, public supplication so that the merciful God may, as it were, be wearied with the prayers of His children and speedily remove the evil causes of war, giving to them who rule to think the thoughts of peace and not of affliction. ”

“ That theology should lead to war is the antithesis of the Christian doctrine, yet no wars have been so fierce and bloody as those waged in "spreading the cross" and propagating a misinterpreted gospel. And so theology suffered doubly from the Monks who perverted it, and from the Knights and the State that inculcated it with fire and sword. ”

“ Some were even lax in matters of religious observance, and how could a war prove victorious when all due glory was not given to the God of battles? Again, there were Christians fighting, in the ranks only, side by side with Moslems—how could this be? Is not war a religious commandment, a sacred matter in which infidels can have no part? The Koran says: “Who dies for God’s sake receives the highest reward”; but how can a Christian be so blest, as he does not follow the law of the Prophet? ”

“ Have not the ungodly made war with the people of God? And was not that equivalent to declaring war with our Father in heaven, and with Jesus Christ his Son, and with his kingdom, with a design to overthrow it, kill his Prophets and Apostles, and put to death his anointed ones, and also every Saint that would not submit to their lasciviousness, to their vices, and corrupting and damning practices? ”

“ But after Christ commanded the sword to be put up, it is unlawful for Christian men to make any other war but that which is the fairest war of all, with the most eager and fierce enemies of the Church, with affection of money, with wrath, with ambition, with dread of death. ”

“ That we regard all war as a sore calamity, contrary to the spirit and teaching of the gospel, and more especially a civil war, as revolting to our Christian teaching, unnatural, abhorrent to all our Christian 139instincts, and subversive of the cause of Christ, whose blessed mission was to establish peace on earth. ”

“ The Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, too, will be in the hands of consecrated ones, seemingly but not actually cruel, skilled through Divine power to use it with telling effect.
21:32. Thou shalt be for fuel to the fire; thy blood shall be in the midst of the land; thou shalt be no more remembered: for I the Lord have spoken it.—Institutions Divinely condemned shall be as fuel for the fires of bloody anarchy and pass into oblivion. The war is the melting-pot of ecclesiasticism. ”

“ We ourselves either serve in the army or recognise it as being not only indispensable, but praiseworthy; And then when war breaks out, we condemn some Chamberlain or other. But, above all, war will exist so long as we not only profess, but tolerate without anger and indignation that distortion of Christianity which is called the Christian Church, and according to which such things are admissible as a Christ-loving army, the consecration of guns and the recognition of a Christian and righteous war. ”

“ To provide against these and other perils, the Church of Christ was founded—"a standard for the nations," "that the gathering together upon the land of Zion and upon her stakes," might be "for a defense, and for a refuge from the storm, and from wrath when it shall be poured out without mixture upon the whole earth." [5]
Other Judgments.—But war is not the only expression of divine wrath. The strife of nation against nation is but one of many turmoils that the last days are destined to witness. Epidemics of sickness are to play a part in the great retribution. ”

“ Therefore, if we profess the principles of peace and nevertheless engage in warfare and strife we as Christians become guilty of sin and fall under the condemnation of Christ, the righteous Judge. Our Position on Military Service In the light of the above principles of Scripture we are constrained as followers of Christ to abstain from all forms of military service and all means of support of war, and must consider members who violate these principles as transgressors and out of fellowship with the church. ”