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Some Justifications for Violence in the Puritan Revolution*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
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Whatever else it may be, the study of political revolution is the study, in a given case, of competing and incompatible assertions regarding the legitimation or justification of violence. This is true because: Since, as Weber put it, the state by definition possesses the legitimate monopoly of violence, and to propose radical changes in the character of a state, as happens in political revolutions, is to propose a radical alternative to the existing pattern of legitimating violence. In short, a revolution is, among other things, a contest over who may properly employ violence under what circumstances.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1972
References
1 Some authors make a good deal of the distinction between “legitimation” and “justification,” but, for our purposes, the distinction is unnecessary. We understand by “legitimacy” the “right or authorization to employ violence.” That is also what we mean by “justification” in this context.
2 We will not involve ourselves in the endless terminological discussions of “violence.” We need only make clear that, in this context, we understand “violence” to mean “physical compulsion or injury.” Secondly, we are using the term in an evaluatively neutral sense, as people do when, in common parlance, they speak of “justifiable” versus “unjustifiable” violence. This is important to remember since “violence” is sometimes evaluatively laden, as, for example, when it is understood as “the unjust exercise of power” (Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary).
3 We are using the term “Puritan Revolution” broadly so as to cover not only the Civil War period, but also the period of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. The term has been rejected by some historians because it is supposed to imply that the “real causes” of the Civil War were religious, when they were “actually” economic and social. I do not find this exclusivist approach convincing. “Puritan Revolution” seems properly to convey the great significance of religious divergence during the middle 1600's, whatever other social and economic factors were also significant. See Prall, Stuart E.'s sane Introduction to The Puritan Revolution (Garden City, New York, 1968)Google Scholar for a similar conclusion.
4 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), ch. 8, Politics and War.
5 Congregationalism: From the Just War to the Crusade in the Puritan Revolution, The Andover Newton Theological School Bulletin 35, 3 (April, 1943), 1–20; cf. Bainton, , Christian Attitudes to War and Peace (New York, 1960), 147–51.Google Scholar
6 Congregationalism; From the Just War to the Crusade …, 3.
7 Walzer, op. cit., 270.
8 Bainton, op. cit., 2.
9 Walzer, op. cit., 282.
10 I am indebted to the illuminating work of Mr. Leroy Walters so far as the interpretation of the just-war tradition in the Middle Ages goes. His doctoral dissertation at Yale University (1971) is entitled “Five Classic Just-War Theories: A Study in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Vitoria, Suarez, Gentili and Grotius. See, particularly, the chapter on Thomas Aquinas' thought for a discussion of the role of “religious reasons” in just-war determinations.
11 We single out the criteria or conditions of lawful authority and just cause from among the other traditional just-war criteria for two reasons: (i) because, as we shall show, they appear so prominently in the literature, and (2) in order to make this short inquiry manageable. A fuller account would have to deal much more extensively than I have with the place of the other criteria in the evaluation of violence.
12 See Sabine, G. H., A History of Political Theory (London, 1959), 211, 217, 220, 327, 331.Google Scholar
13 Bainton, op. cit., 6–15.
14 Abbott, W. C., The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (Cambridge, Mass., 1937–1947), 4 vols., I, 292.Google Scholar
15 Ashley, Maurice, England in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore, 1966), 65–66Google Scholar, italics added. Ashley supports this view as follows: “Greedy for wider political powers, [the Commons] wrested from the King's counsellors the initiative in legislation, they demanded complete ‘freedom of speech’ (which both King James I and King Charles I would not recognize), and they asserted their right to dictate to the King on religion and foreign policy, subjects which Queen Elizabeth had held to be peculiarly her own affairs. They put forward all these demands not in the name of a brave, new world but as their lawful rights, broad-based on precedent.” p. 65.
16 Contained in Prall, The Puritan Revolution, 35, 41. Italics added.
16a See Peters, Richard, Hobbes (Baltimore, 1967)Google Scholar, chs. 8 and 9, for an exceptionally good discussion of the transition in authority, according to Weber's categories.
17 An entire essay could be written on the concept of “necessity” in Puritan argumentation. The concept is obviously crucial so far as the just-war tradition is concerned, for it relates to all of the criteria in just-war doctrine. For a military effort to be “necessary” it must conform to all the various criteria. The Puritans were very much concerned to prove the “necessity” of their resort to violent means. I am simply not able to go into all the dimensions of this matter in this paper.
18 See, particularly, Locke'sSecond Treatise of Civil Government, ch. 19, Of the Dissolution of Government, for a remarkable discussion of the conditions for justifiable revolution.
19 See, for example, Woodhouse, A. S. P., Puritanism and Liberty, Being the Army Debates (1647–1648) (London, 1938).Google Scholar
20 Cited in Bainton, op. cit., 16.
21 Cited in Walzer, op. cit., 296.
22 Abbott, op. cit., I, 697.
23 Cited in Paul, Robert S., The Lord Protector (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1964), 226.Google Scholar
24 Ibid., 226.
25 Walzer quite properly makes much of this, op. cit., ch. 9. We simply emphasize that this side of Cromwell's outlook is not the entire story.
26 Abbott, op. cit., IV, 445; italics added.
27 Paul, op. cit.; see particularly 325–33 for a persuasive discussion of Cromwell's concern for liberty of conscience and toleration. Cf. Barker, Ernest's excellent little biography, Oliver Cromwell and the English People (Cambridge, 1937)Google Scholar. Moreover, Cromwell's concern, inconsistent as it may have been, undoubtedly had practical effects upon the future of British institutions: “The Royalists returned [after the Protectorate ended in 1660], but they could not recover the past. Charles II had been restored without conditions, but he had to reckon with the results of twenty years of history. In spite of all its failures, militant Puritanism had destroyed for ever the conditions under which royal absolutism could flourish. The way lay open for the development of constitutional government. And in the years of adversity which followed, Puritanism recovered its soul.” Cragg, Gerald R., The Collapse of Militant Puritanism, Essays in Modern English Church History (New York, 1966), 103Google Scholar. Cf. Ashley, op. cit., for a similar judgment, 177.
28 There are several rather remarkable examples of this. One is cited by and discussed by Paul, op. cit., 138: “When the Agitators’ detailed proposals were read it was obvious, as Cromwell observed, that they were introducing a form of government radically different from that which the country had traditionally held … Cromwell pleaded that they should look at the proposals with ‘reason and judgment,’ but this at once presented him with a theological difficulty, for how could he allow ‘reason’ to have precedence over ‘faith’? ‘I know a man may answer all difficulties with faith,’ [said Cromwell] … but … we are very apt all of us to call that faith that perhaps may be but carnal imagination and carnal reasonings.’ Faith might be used as an excuse for any rashness — ‘we ought to consider the consequences, and God hath given us our reason that we may do this.’ ”
In 1645, Cromwell made a striking appeal for religious toleration on the grounds that “in the things of the mind we look for no compulsion, but that of light and reason” (Abbott, op. cit., I, 377). The general tendency of many of his contemporaries, of course, was to argue that “freedom of religion” derived not only from a true understanding of the Christian faith, but also from the principle of the universal right to consent “in the things of the mind,” a principle based, as we have seen, on a belief in “right reason.” It was concluded from this belief that all religions were tolerable to the extent they conformed to the principle of toleration. As Paul shows, Cromwell actually went remarkably far in espousing and allowing for this principle. His specific objection to Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism was that they did not, in his judgment, clearly conform to the standard of liberty of conscience.