Pacification

“ After having drawn a frightful picture of the evils of war and the effects of discord, he ordered the Lombard cities to renounce their enmities, and dictated to them, in the name of the Church, a treaty of universal pacification. At no period had the middle ages presented a more sublime and touching spectacle; the historian of that time, who has nothing but troubles and wars to describe, ought to be delighted at an opportunity to tell of such an imposing and solemn scene, wherein religion recalled assembled nations to a sense of all that her maxims contain that is most consoling and salutary. ”

“ They considered the mode of pacification proposed as at once an insult to the feelings, and an affront to the understandings of a people too serious for trifling when all was at stake and too wise to be cajoled by superficial appearances. Yet, those best acquainted with the situation and character, the genius and connections of the inhabitants of the middle colonies, were not surprised to find many among them who seemed ready to embrace such humiliating conditions, as the safety, the interest, the honor and justice of America., were bound to reject. ”

“ To people residing in these countries, and who know the real state of parties, and the true nature of the insurrection, the idea of securing pacification by concessions to the insurgents appears simply absurd. In the first place, reforms and concessions cannot be executed until pacification is obtained, and in the next, for reasons which I have frequently explained to your Lordship, those who are in arms and who keep up the insurrection, care nothing about them ”

“ The next day but one, August 28, appeared a royal manifesto running, “The king willeth and intendeth that all noblemen and others whosoever of the religion styled Reformed be empowered to live and abide in all security and liberty, with their wives, children, and families, in their houses, as they have heretofore done and were empowered to do by benefit of the edicts of pacification. ”

“ It certainly belongs to his Highness alone to determine finally the extent of the sacrifices which it is expedient for him to make, in order to secure the pacification of his empire, and that Sovereign ought not to doubt that the Emperor desires sincerely that that pacification may be effected upon conditions as little unfavourable as possible to the Porte. ”

“ The Abbe Duguerry now came forward amid great cheering, and said that "the eminent journalist, Girardin, and the great English logician, Mr. Cobden, had made it unnecessary for any further advocacy in that assembly of the Peace cause—that if the principles laid down in the resolutions were carried out, the work would be done. He said that the question of general pacification was built on truth—truth which emanated from God—and it were as vain to undertake to prevent air from expanding as to check the progress of truth. It must and would prevail." ”

“ And from people who daily read their bibles, attend early services, and appoint weeks of prayer, there are sent out messengers of peace to inferior races, who are forthwith ousted from their lands by filibustering expeditions authorized in Downing Street; while those who resist are treated as "rebels," the deaths they inflict in retaliation are called "murders," and the process of subduing them is named "pacification." ”

“ Henry III., in April, 1576, made peace with the Protestants, and the edict of pacification was published in parliament, May 14, permitting them to build churches, and have sermons where they pleased. The Guisian faction, enraged at this general liberty, began the famous league for defence of the Catholic religion, which became so formidable, that it obliged the king to assemble the states of the kingdom at Blois, in December, 1576 ”

“ They ought surely to shake hands; for each, if he be honest, will have to own himself the convert of the other. "You admit then after all," cries the triumphant Pacifist, "that Peace is the real end of human endeavour!" "Whether or no," grunts the other in reply, "this at any rate was the only road to it."
One wonders—will the Pacifist be content? He has reached his goal sure enough; though by means which he has been accustomed to denounce as the end of all true morality? ”

“ In time of peace the Pacifists have a great following, and they seem to be in a majority; but when war breaks out a great number who merely 275sympathise, but do not absolutely believe, fall away and leave the true Pacifists standing, as they have stood in each war up till now, in a hopeless minority. ”

“ It seeks the welfare of the world and of generations to come. It is always subsidiary to the paramount interest of the Kingdom of God.
Just because it regards non-resistance not as an end in itself but only as one of the divinest means to an end, Biblical pacifism can hold before men's eyes the moving figure of the martyred Servant, dumb as the lamb in the shearer's hands, while it can in the same breath commend the men of violence that take the Kingdom of Heaven by force. ”

“ To these essays I have prefixed an ode, "Ara Pacis," written during the first days of the war. It is an act of faith in Peace and Concord. Another act of faith will comprise the final chapter. This time it will be faith in action; the faith which, in the face of the brute force of states and of tyrannical opinion, proclaims the invincible independence of Thought. ”

“ The last struggle of Pagan Rome to destroy the church by persecution, before the triumph of Constantine, and the public establishment of the Christian religion, might be well represented by the attempt of the dragon to destroy the child; and the safety of the church, and its complete deliverance from Pagan persecution, by the symbol of a child caught up to heaven, and placed near the throne of God. The persecution under Maximin was the last struggle of Paganism to retain the supremacy, and to crush Christianity in the empire. ”

“ Again the General tried to protest, but Gordon did not hear.
"Think of it! Kaisers and Kings and Presidents asking God's blessing on their Ministries of War! Bishops and Archbishops praying for more battleships! Christians? Followers of Christ? Why, in the name of God, do they not tear the scales from their eyes and stand revealed to themselves as good, upright, honest, honourable Pagans, bent on the re-paganisation of the world and the destruction of Christian civilisation? ”

“ And in an age like this, so deeply excited about church matters, fell now the world-rousing struggle between the papacy and the empire. It appeared to annihilate the foundations on which church and state had hitherto been reared. With bitterness men saw those powers in conflict with each other on whose concord they had believed the peace and happiness of the world to depend. ”

“ As the revival of dialectic renewed men’s interests in abstract science, so did the revival of law broaden men’s practical interests. If in the long-run it gave weapons to Empire as well as to Papacy, the first result was to complete the equipment of the hierarchy for the business of ruling the world. While the civilian’s Empire was a theory, the canonist’s Papacy was a fact. ”

“ A decision by the pacifist movement in this country to break completely with conscription, to give up the idea that we can “exert more influence” if we conform in some measure, do not resist to the uttermost—this might awaken our countrymen to a realization of the precipice on the edge of which we stand. ”

“ I was thinking of Paqueta, and what her part might be in her husband’s ambitions, when the reverberations of the fusilade of Paris, the cries of the massacred of the 25th, smote upon my ears, here, three thousand miles from the scene of that tragedy. Thus fell the Mountain: and with the Mountain, and through the Mountain fell the Republic; for the Republic died with the coming in of the Dictatorship, and the Mountain rested and must ever rest upon the shoulders of the poor. ”

“ It must also be granted that the idea of what the Papacy might do for the peace of the world, as the supreme arbiter of disputes and mediator between contending Powers, gained possession of men’s minds, and entered into the definite policy of the Church about the twelfth century, in a manner that might suggest reflection for the nineteenth. ”

“ What has been deemed, however, in Christianity the most unrealizable ideal is that which may be called pacifism—to resist not evil, to turn the other cheek, to agree with your adversary while you are in the way with him. ”

“ We may suppose, indeed, that the favor thus unexpectedly showered on the new faith by the Imperial government would tend inevitably to reverse the proportions of the two persuasions, or rather of the two parties, which now divided the Roman world. Powerful as the example of rulers has always been in such matters, it would never, perhaps, be more so than at the moment when paganism, corrupt and effete, had lost all the spirit of a real faith, and when, as we shall see, Christianity was only too ready to accept overtures to the easy compromise which its rivals soon began to offer it. ”

“ It is useless to multiply examples; but it is plain that the very same vital energy which produces all that is best also produces war and the love of war. This is the basis of the opposition to pacifism felt by many men whose aims and activities are by no means brutal. Pacifism, in practice, too often expresses merely lack of force, not the refusal to use force in thwarting others. Pacifism, if it is to be both victorious and beneficent, must find an outlet, compatible with humane feeling, for the vigor which now leads nations into war and destruction. ”

“ Even religious intolerance, suspended for a time, has reawakened and, while its blinded votaries are struggling for tactical advantage, Paganism runs rampant with poisonous fangs aimed at the heart of all religion. Races, too, are stirred again to selfish rivalries. ”

“ Behind, all engaged in tying the nation’s hands, lest it might strike promptly and forcefully, is Pacifism, cowardly and self-seeking, more anxious to avoid temporary suffering than to preserve the honor and safety of the nation ”

“ Here I wish to suggest that even if the question is the conscription of non-pacifist youth, it is a fundamental mistake for pacifists ever to relent in their opposition to this evil, ever to devote their energies primarily to securing provisions for COs in a draft law or to [26] lapse into a feeling that conscription has somehow become more palatable if such provisions are made by the State. It is not our own children if we are pacifist parents, our fellow-pacifist Christians if we are churchmen, about whom we should be most deeply concerned. ”

“ And although this country is not strictly speaking a pagan country, yet the practice in question is a pagan practice; and so effectually wrought into the habits and feelings and institutions of our land, that its complete extirpation must necessarily be the work of time.—But here let it be particularly observed, that, in all such cases, we have no licence for the toleration of any sinful custom, a single moment, without the adoption of wise and prudent measures calculated ultimately to abolish it. ”

“ That is the whole case of Pacifism: we shall not improve except at the price of using our reason in these matters; of understanding them better. Surely it is a truism that that is the price of all progress; saner conceptions—man's recognition of his mistakes, whether those mistakes take the form of cannibalism, slavery, torture, superstition, tyranny, false laws, or what you will. ”

“ Of Christianity no trace is to be found: power, [Pg 140] wealth, industry, art, science, literature, are in the hands of the pagans. The state-craft of the wild beasts is lying and force, alternating with the most insidious hypocrisy. They preach peace, distribute peace-prizes, build peace-palaces, but are always seeking war in order to be able to rob and tyrannise. If their subordinates believe them, and preach peace themselves, they are thrown into prison. ”

“ THE storm of words aroused the world over by a Papal diplomatic Note is another proof that the Papacy has lost none of its power and prestige, and is still, on this threshold of the twentieth century, the incarnation of moral power opposed to mere brute force, the right of the strongest. ”

“ What is it which we see in all these regions? A simultaneous and persistent determination to destroy, by every species of persecution, the Catholic Church. Now, the general law of persecution is the conversion of the persecutors.
Through the cross Christ began the redemption of the world; through the cross the redemption of the world is to be continued and completed. It was mainly by the shedding of the blood of the martyrs that the Roman Empire was gained to the faith. ”

“ The revived lay-power tended of itself to correct the worst abuses. The Empire had, as we have seen, reformed the Papacy. But if the Church was to live, it could not owe its life to the patronage or goodwill of outside reformers. The Church must reform itself. ”

“ Sovereigns, become their vassals, executed with fear and trembling the decrees Heaven pronounced against the enemies of the holy see which had created itself the arbiter of faith. In fact, these inhuman pontiffs immolated to their God a thousand times more human victims than paganism had sacrificed to all its divinities. ”

“ They argue that the Pagans, who did not believe in exclusive salvation, persecuted, and that therefore that doctrine cannot be the cause of persecution. The answer is that no sane man ever maintained that all the persecutions on record were from the same source. We can prove by the clearest evidence that Christian persecutions sprang chiefly from the causes I have alleged. The causes of Pagan persecutions, though different, are equally manifest, and I shall proceed shortly to indicate them. ”