21. Dr. Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy
The reputation of Dr. Paley is so great that, as he has devoted a chapter of his Moral Philosophy to “War and Military Establishments,”
it will perhaps be expected, in an inquiry like the present, that some specific reference should be made to his opinions; and I make this reference willingly.
The chapter “on War” begins thus:
“Because the Christian Scriptures describe wars as what they are, as crimes or judgments, some men have been led to believe that it is unlawful for a Christian to bear arms.
But it should be remembered that it may be necessary for individuals to unite their force, and for this end to resign themselves to a common will;
and yet it may be true that that will is often actuated by criminal motives, and often determined to destructive purposes.”
This is a most remarkable paragraph. It assumes, at once, the whole subject of inquiry, and is an assumption couched in extraordinary laxity of language: “It may be necessary for individuals to unite their force.”
The tea table and the drawing room have often told us this:
but philosophy should tell us how the necessity is proved.
Nor is the morality of the paragraph more rigid than the philosophy:
“Wars are crimes” and are often undertaken from “criminal motives and determined to destructive purposes,” yet of these purposes, motives, and crimes, “it may be necessary” for Christians to become the abettors and accomplices!
Paley proceeds to say that in the New Testament the profession of a soldier is nowhere forbidden or condemned;
and he refers to the cases of John the Baptist, of the Roman centurion, and of Cornelius;
and with this he finishes all inquiry into the Christian evidence upon the subject, after having expended upon it in less than a page of the edition before me.
These arguments are all derived from the silence of the New Testament, and to all reasoning founded upon this silence, no one can give a better answer than himself.
In replying to the defences by which the advocates of slavery attempt to justify it, he notices that which they advance from the silence of the New Testament respecting it.
He says it is urged that:
“Slavery was a part of the civil constitution of most countries when Christianity appeared; yet that no passage is to be found in the Christian Scriptures by which it is condemned or prohibited.”
“This,” he re-joins, “is true, for Christianity, soliciting admission into all nations of the world, abstained, as behoved it, from intermeddling with the civil institutions of any.
But does it follow, from the silence of Scriptures concerning them, that all the civil institutions which then prevailed were right, or that the bad should not be exchanged for better?”
I beg the reader to apply this reasoning to Paley’s own arguments in favour of war from the silence of the Scriptures. How happens it that he did not remember it himself?