For my own part, I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil.” Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches. The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity. Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be productive of evil or, as before said, be premiums for crime. But even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically impossible. If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention and it is incumbent upon us, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear. Besides, the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice: but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for a crime. “Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.”
Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel, to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine: neither do you. This doctrine never should be preached again. It has wrung the hearts of the tender it has furrowed the cheeks of the good. It has filled the good with horror and with fear but it has had no effect upon the infamous and base. It has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man and woman and child. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I will go down with the ship, with those who love me, and with those whom I have loved.
I will not be guilty of the ineffable meanness of paddling away in some orthodox canoe. “When the great ship containing the hopes and aspirations of the world, when the great ship freighted with mankind goes down in the night of death, chaos and disaster, I am willing to go down with the ship.
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