Violence and Virtue

The moderate Puritan, Richard Sibbes, argued in Violence Victorious (1639) that all people violently (i.e. wholeheartedly and earnestly) pursued desires. Religion did not diminish this violence – it redirected it. According to Matthew 11:12, ‘the kingdome of heaven suffereth violence [βιάζϵται], and the violent [βιασταὶ] take it by force’. This violence, however, was differentiated from ‘a violence of iniquity and injustice; and so the people of God, of all others, ought not to be violent people. … Violence rather debars out of the kingdom of heaven than is any qualification for it’. Taking life was no light matter.

In 1644, Griffith Williams, a royalist chaplain, believed eminent Puritan divines would be damned. By leading the nation into an unjust and unholy so-called ‘bellum sanctum’, these ministers would be ‘indicted at the barre of Gods justice for a felo de se’ (suicide). The sword Puritans thrust at their sovereign pierced their own souls. The difference between righteous killing and spiritual suicide was in the beholder's eye – and views hinged on rival interpretations of God's providential communications.

Scripture placed the highest sanctions on those who unjustly took life. However, between 1636 and 1676, Puritans exerted enormous energy towards killing countless humans. They frequently showed a mundane disregard for civilian or soldier through warfare, impressment, imprisonment, mutilation, pillage, destructions of homes and crops, forced relocation, land confiscation, stripping civilians of clothing, slavery, forced transatlantic relocation and the ritualised display of the dead. Why did they think these acts were just? Why were these acts not considered damnable? Why were they deemed holy and praiseworthy? As this study demonstrates, they believed this life-taking was just and even that God participated in it.

What did the godly say God did in war; and how did they claim to know? This question lies at the heart of the book. I have given the term ‘military providentialism’ to the attempt to understand God's will and agency in war; ‘godly violence’ to the conclusion that a lethal act was just and holy. The godly analysed the details of war on several levels and used many competing interpretive frames.