_Direct._ II. Be sure you have a warrantable cause and call. In a bad cause it is a dreadful thing to conquer, or to be conquered. If you conquer, you are a murderer of all that you kill; if you are conquered and die in the prosecution of your sin, I need not tell you what you may expect. I know we are here upon a difficulty which must be tenderly handled: if we make the sovereign power to be the absolute and only judge, whether the soldier's cause and call be good; then it would follow, that it is the duty of all the christian subjects of the Turk, to fight against Christianity as such, and to destroy all christians when the Turk commandeth it; and that all the subjects of other lands are bound to invade this or other such christian kingdoms, and destroy their kings, whenever their popish or malicious princes or states shall command them; which being intolerable consequences, prove the antecedent to be intolerable. And yet on the other side, if subjects must be the judges of their cause and call, the prince shall not be served, nor the common good secured, till the interest of the subjects will allow them to discern the goodness of the cause. Between these two intolerable consequents, it is hard to meet with a just discovery of the mean. Most run into one of the extremes, which they take to be the less, and think that there is no other avoiding of the other. The grand errors in this, and a hundred like cases, come from not distinguishing aright the case _de esse_, from the case _de apparere_, or _cognoscere_, and not first determining the former, as it ought, before the latter be determined. Either the cause which subjects are commanded to fight in, is really lawful to them, or it is not. (Say not here importunely, Who shall judge? For we are now but upon the question _de esse_.) If it be not lawful in itself, but be mere robbery or murder, then come to the case of evidence; either this evil is to the subject discernible by just means, or not: if it be, I am not able for my part to justify him from the sin, if he do it, no more than to have justified the three witnesses, Dan. iii. if they had bowed down to the golden calf, or Dan. vi. if he had forborne prayer, or the apostles, if they had forborne preaching, or the soldiers for apprehending and crucifying Christ, when their superiors commanded them. For God is first to be obeyed and feared. But if the evil of the cause be such, as the subject cannot by just and ordinary means discern, then must he come next to examine his call; and a volunteer unnecessarily he may not be in a doubtful cause: it is so heinous a sin to murder men, that no man should unnecessarily venture upon that which may prove to be murder for aught he knoweth. But if you ask what call may make such a doubtful action necessary, I answer, It must be such as warranteth it, either from the end of the action, or from the authority of the commander, or both. And from the