"War is amongst the most dreadful evils that can afflict a nation": a British sermon from the Revolutionary War

Continuing this short Remembrancetide series of extracts from wartime sermons of Anglicans across the centuries, today an extract from a 1781 fast day sermon during the Revolutionary War. The preacher, while a chaplain to the King and convinced of "the justice of our cause", explicitly acknowledged the evil of war, particularly when waged against those who previously shared the same allegiance. He went on to declare that victory does not erase the cost of war:

War is indisputably amongst the moſt dreadful evils that can afflict a nation; it is one of those scourges with which God chastises his sinful and rebellious creatures; an instrument of vengeance in the hands of the Almighty, wherewith he punishes the grievous sins and offences from time to time committed against him. If there be a circumstance that can render this destructive tyrant still more formidable, that can enhance his severity and double his terrors, it is doubtless that calamity in which we are ourselves at this period so unhappily involved; it is the melancholy consideration that we are opposing those with whom we have been so long and so intimately united; carrying our arms against those whom we have so long loved, cherished, and protected; that those who were once the objects of our esteem, tenderness, and affection, are now become the mark to which are bent all our hostile preparations ...

I repeat it, my brethren; let not any partial success bring on security, or indulgence be the mother of forgetfulness; the face of war is terrible, even when he smiles upon us; his best and most gorgeous robe is stained with blood; and even when he wears a crown, it is a crown of thorns. Whilst victory waves her banners before us, we are too much delighted with the prospect, to consider how dearly they were purchased: the news of conquest reaches to every ear, and is echoed by every tongue; but who, in the meantime, listens to the shrieks of the widow, or regards the cries of the orphan?

From Thomas Francklin's sermon 'On the Fast Day, February 21, 1781' in his Sermons on Various Subjects, Volume I. The picture is of a memorial which marks the burial place of a British soldier who fell in the service of the Crown during the Revolutionary War.

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