5. Christianity
In an inquiry into the decisions of Christianity upon the question of war, we have to refer to the general tendency of the revelation,
to the individual declarations of Jesus Christ, to his practice, to the sentiments and practices of his commissioned followers, to the opinions respecting its lawfulness which were held by their immediate converts, and to some other species of Christian evidence.
It is, perhaps, the capital error of those who have attempted to instruct others in the duties of morality that they have not been willing to enforce the rules of the Christian Scriptures in their full extent.
Almost every moralist pauses somewhere short of the point which they prescribe;
and this pause is made at a greater or lesser distance from the Christian standard in proportion to the admission, in a greater or lesser degree, of principles which they have superadded to the principles of the gospel.
Few, however, supersede the laws of Christianity without proposing some principle of “expediency,” some doctrine of “natural law,” or some theory of “intrinsic decency and turpitude” which they lay down as the true standard of moral judgment.
They who reject truth are not likely to escape error:
Having mingled with Christianity principles that it never taught, they are not likely to be consistent with truth, or with themselves;
and accordingly, he who seeks for direction from the professed teachers of morality finds his mind bewildered in conflicting theories, and his judgment embarrassed by contradictory instructions.
But “wisdom is justified by all her children,” and she is justified, perhaps, by nothing more evidently than by the laws which she has imposed;
for all who have proposed any standard of rectitude other than that which Christianity has laid down, or who have admixed any foreign principles with the principles which she teaches, have hitherto proved that they have only been “sporting themselves with their own deceiving.”