War & Peace Quote by Adam Clarke

Clarke writes with the swagger of a man who thinks time is on his side, and he means it literally. By framing scripture as “a revelation from God,” he doesn’t just make a theological claim; he tries to take the argument out of the realm of debate entirely. If the source is divine, dissent stops being disagreement and starts looking like defiance. That’s the move: he turns belief into a fortified position, not an opinion.

The language is military and courtroom at once. “Stood the test,” “maintained their ground,” “every species of enemy,” “every mode of attack” casts critics as invaders and skepticism as siegecraft. It’s a rhetorical preemption: before you raise an objection, you’ve already been assigned a role as “enemy.” In early 19th-century Britain, with Enlightenment rationalism, biblical criticism, and scientific modernity pressuring traditional Christian authority, that framing matters. Clarke is preaching endurance as proof, suggesting longevity functions like empirical evidence.

Then comes the clincher: “Truth is mighty, and must prevail.” It’s not an argument so much as a verdict, echoing the Protestant confidence that truth has an inherent momentum. The subtext is reassurance for the faithful in an age of noisy doubt: you don’t need to win every skirmish; history will win for you. Yet the line also reveals anxiety. You don’t insist truth “must” prevail unless you feel, at least faintly, how plausible it is that it might not.