subject in detail should consult the articles on war in Hastings' Encyclopmdia of Religion and Ethics and in The Dictionary of the Apostolic Church. A fuller account . is given by C. J. Cadoux, D.D., in his book The Early Christian Attitude to War. Among the Early Fathers, Justin Martyr and Tatian in the second century, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian and Hippolytus in the third, Arnobius, Eusebius and Lactantius in the fourth, all regarded war as organized iniquity. Here are a few characteristic quotations from their writings on the subject. The first two are from the Divinm lnstitutiones of Lactantius. "When God prohibits killing, He not only forbids us to commit brigandage, which is not allowed even by the public laws; but He warns us that not even those things which are regarded as legal among men are to be done. And so it will not be lawful for a just man to serve as a soldier • • • nor to accuse anyone of a capital offence, since it makes no difference whether thou killest with a sword or with a word, since killing itself is forbidden. And so in this commandment of God no exception at all ought to be made that it is always wrong to kill a man." "How can he be just who injures, hates, despoils, kills? And those who strive to be of advantage to their own country (in war) do all these things." Tertullian remarks that truth, gentleness and justice cannot be obtained by means of war. "Who shall produce these results with the sword and not rather those which are the contrary of gentleness and justice, namely deceit and harshness and injustice, which are of course the proper business of battles?" (An excellent statement of the almost invariably neglected truth that means determine ends and that good ends cannot be achieved by bad or even inappropriate means.) Origen writes of his co-religionists that "we no longer take 'sword' against a 'nation,' nor do we learn 'any more to make war,' having become sons of peace for the sake of Jesus who is our leader, instead of following the ancestral customs in which we were strangers to the covenants." In the Canons of Hippolytus we read that a soldier 18 Biblioteca Giro Bianco l •
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