On the of true courteousness to our brethren. contrary, this brief indirect notice of both, as pre-established and unquestionable, has the effect of an enforcement. But, if these, which are commonly viewed as, in a great measure, disinterested duties, are thus slightly referred to, what might we reasonably expect would be the way of noticing those instinctive duties which we owe to ourselves,* which may be also termed rights; and those civil duties which we owe both to ourselves and each other, as members of a political community? These evidently take their rise from present and personal interests, and therefore are foreign to the leading object of evangelical precepts. Even a total omission of reference to them would not have disproved their lawfulness or expediency; and the most brief and general implication of these duties or rights is all the confirmation or admission of them which was to be looked for. The precept, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," is a sufficient admission, that regard to our present personal welfare is both an established and a lawful principle of human con * I am aware that metaphysical controversy may be raised upon the propriety of the terms instinctive or natural duties, or any others which could be substituted for them; but, if the terms designate sufficiently the things intended, their philosophical accuracy is not important to our inquiry. duct, provided it be not exclusive, or even disproportionate, but be accompanied by a like concern for the welfare of others. But many lawful and proper actings of this selflove, and of that proximate social love which is nearly allied to it, (as the affection to wife or children,) are, as might be expected, not detailed, or referred to, in the New Testament. Who can find, or who would look for, a precept authorizing him to use painful means for the restoration of his own health, or the preservation of his child's; such as the various operations of the surgical knife, or the communicating of a disease by the lancet, (as the variolous, or the vaccine infection,) to prevent a greater? Again, our union in political communities, or in a state of civil society, is acknowledged by all to be necessary to human happiness and improvement. It is grounded on a most legitimate and beneficial exercise of regard for both our own and our neighbour's good; or for ourselves, as members of society; and for society, as connected with ourselves. But who can find, or who expects to find, in the New Testament, a direct precept enjoining that long established institute, civil government, recommending any peculiar modification of it, or defining its particular acts? --- We shall even seek, in vain, any authority for voluntary associations, with a specific design of benevolence. What command do we find for instituting a hospital, a school for the blind or dumb; a provident society, or bank for savings? A caviller might even object to the former class of institutions, that Christian charities should be individual, inasmuch as they are commanded to be secret; (Matt. vi. 3. "When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right haud doeth;") and to the latter, that care and provision for future earthly wants are expressly discouraged, Matt. vi. 25, 31, 34. But still less do we find any command for political acts, for that still more important kind of beneficence, which is so necessary, as to be undertaken by the public authority, and secured by the exercise of force. Where shall we discover a precept or declaration that authorizes putting crews of merchant ships in quarantine, in order to exclude, by this restraint, the communication of pestilence to to a maritime country; or the confinement of offenders, with those various degrees of privation and labour, which constitute what is termed, " prison a discipline?" Yet those who claim of us positive command, or a distinct permission, in the New Testament, to authorize national defence, very justly and benevolently cooperate in some of these institutions, and recommend the rest, without seeking any scriptural injunction or permission; they are rightly viewed as some of the most effective methods by which evil can be prevented, lessened, or restrained; amply warranted by the general precept above cited, being grounded either on love to our neighbour, or on a fit regard to his welfare and our own conjointly. Nothing is more easy than to caricature this argument, and to represent me as preposterously attempting to justify the horrible evils of war, by its analogy to the art of healing, or to institutions which have for their object the relief of misery, the exclusion of disease, and the correction of vice and crime.* *The truth is, unless it be proved that every war has been unjust and criminal on both sides, war is a name adapted to produce confusion of ideas; because it includes contrary things, aggression and defence, crime and punishment. grant the fact to be, that most wars have been unjust on both sides, which has led to this indiscriminate name, and that they have generally deserved to be stigmatized with a confounding appellation, as much as the acts of challenger and challenged (though differing in degrees of guilt) always deserve to be condemned under the common name of duel, a practice, by its very nature, unchristian and unlawful. But still, while it is certain that there Against the prejudiced or ignorant perversions of our reasoning, it is not possible to be secured; but the candid and discerning reader cannot join in these. He will see that in a case where the expulsion or seizure of armed invaders would be the greatest present benefit which a peaceable community could receive, it is as unreasonable to claim the sanction of the New Testament by a distinct precept, to justify this act, as to justify the painful and dangerous extraction of a tumour, the inoculation of a child, or the solitary confinement of a culprit. The present question is not, Whether there have been, or may be, such cases. That, I think, has been settled by several instances considered in my first Letter. I presume no one will doubt that Egbert and his forces, when they defeated the Danes at Charmouth,* who had disembarked from thirty-five ships on the coast of Dorset, were accounted greater benefactors by the inhabitants of that county, than as though they had built a hospital. The present have been, and may be, wars in which the crime is as clearly on one side as in a riot or robbery, it is as unfit that the name war should be applied to both parties, as the name riot, or robbery, to the forcible acts of the civil power, which restrains or suppresses them. We cannot, however, change the language of mankind; but it is sophistical to avail ourselves of its ambiguity. * Hume's History, 8vo. ed. vol. i. page 68. |