injure or shut up in prison these wicked men, because there would
be no one in a Christian society to carry out such punishment,
since every Christian, as a Christian, has been commanded to use
no force against the wicked.

The third kind of answer, still more subtle than the preceding,
consists in asserting that though the command of non-resistance to
evil by force is binding on the Christian when the evil is
directed against himself personally, it ceases to be binding when
the evil is directed against his neighbors, and that then the
Christian is not only not bound to fulfill the commandment, but is
even bound to act in opposition to it in defense of his neighbors,
and to use force against transgressors by force. This assertion
is an absolute assumption, and one cannot find in all Christ's
teaching any confirmation of such an argument. Such an argument
is not only a limitation, but a direct contradiction and negation
of the commandment. If every man has the right to have recourse
to force in face of a danger threatening an other, the question of
the use of force is reduced to a question of the definition of
danger for another. If my private judgment is to decide the
question of what is danger for another, there is no occasion for
the use of force which could not be justified on the ground of
danger threatening some other man. They killed and burnt witches,
they killed aristocrats and girondists, they killed their enemies
because those who were in authority regarded them as dangerous for
the people.

If this important limitation, which fundamentally undermines the
whole value of the commandment, had entered into Christ's meaning,
there must have been mention of it somewhere. This restriction is