A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many useful questions and cases of conscience are…A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many usefull questions and cases of conscience are…

5. The Law is also to be applied against civill Covenants, not of peace, or of commerce, but of war; that is, a League offensive and defensive, wherein we associate our selves ⟨p. 177⟩with idolaters, infidels, heretics, or any other known enemies of truth or godliness, so as to have the same friends or enemies. A covenant of Peace or commerce with such may happen to be unlawful in respect of some circumstances as when Peace is given to those Rebels, Murderers, Incendiaries in the Kingdom, who by the law of God ought to be destroyed by the hand of Justice, or when commerce with idolaters is so abused, as to furn sh them with the things that they are known to make use of in their idolatry. But as for [Greek or Hebrew], a confederacy engaging us into a War with such associates, tis absolutely and in its own nature unlawful: And I find it condemned by good Writers, of the Popish party, of the Lutheran party, and of the Orthodox party. Some of all these are before cited. What holiness God required in the Armies of Israel, see Deut: 23. 9, 11, 12, 13, 14: we may well argue as Isidorus P•lusiota doth, lib. 3 Epist. 14. If the Law was so severe against such uncleannesses as were not voluntary, how much less would God suffer such as did voluntarily and wickedly defile themselves. Tis marked as a part of A•imelechs sin, Jud: 9. 4. that he hired vain and light persons which followed him. God would have Amaziah to dismiss an hundred thousand men of Israel being already with him in a body, and told him he should fall before the enemy if these went with him, because God was not with them, 2 Chron. 25. 7. &c. If they had not yet been gathered into a body, it had been much to abstain from gathering them, upon the Prophets admonition, but this is much more, that he sends them away after they are in a body, and takes his hazard of all the hurt that so many enraged Soldiers could do to him or his people, and indeed they did much hurt in going back, vers: 13, yet God rewarded Amaziah's obedience with a great Victory. In the last age shortly after the begun Reformation in Germany, this case of conscience concerning the unlawfulness of such confederacies ⟨p. 178⟩was much looked at. The city of Strasburg, Anno, 1629.