_Direct._ III. When you are doubtful whether your cause and call be good, it is (ordinarily) safest to sit still, and not to venture in so dangerous a case, without great deliberation and sufficient evidence to satisfy your consciences. Neander might well say of Solon's law, which punished them that took not one part or other in a civil war or sedition, _Admirabilis autem illa atque plane incredibilis, quæ honoribus abdicat eum, qui orta seditione nullam factionem secutus sit_.[123] No doubt, he is a culpable neuter that will not defend his governors and his country, when he hath a call; but it is so dreadful a thing to be guilty of the blood and calamities of an unjust war, that a wise man will rather be abused as a neuter, than run himself into the danger of such a case. _Direct._ IV. When necessity forceth you to go forth in a just war, do it with such humiliation and unwillingness as beseemeth one that is a patient, a spectator, and an actor, in one of the sorest of God's temporal judgments. Go not to kill men, as if you went to a cock-fight, or a bear-baiting. Make not a sport of a common calamity; be not insensible of the displeasure of God, expressed in so great a judgment. What a sad condition is it to yourselves, to be employed in destroying others! If they be good, how sad a thought is it, that you must kill them! If they are wicked, how sad is it that by killing them you cut off all their hopes of mercy, and send them suddenly to hell! How sad an employment is it, to spoil and undo the poor inhabitants where you come! to cast them into terrors, to deprive them of that which they have long been labouring for! to prepare for famine, and be like a consuming pestilence where you come! Were it but to see such desolations, it should melt you into compassion; much more to be the executioners yourselves. How unsuitable a work is it to the grace of love! Though I doubt not but it is a service which the love of God, our country, and our rulers, may sometimes justify and command, yet (as to the rulers and masters of the business) it must be a very clear and great necessity that can warrant a war. And, as to the soldiers, they must needs go with great regret, to kill men by thousands, whom they love as themselves. He that loveth his neighbour as himself, and blesseth, and doth good to his persecuting enemy, will take it heavily to be employed in killing him, even when necessity maketh it his duty. But the greatest calamity of war is the perniciousness of it to men's souls. Armies are commonly that to the soul, as a city infected with the plague is to the body; the very nurseries and academies of pride, and cruelty, and drunkenness, and whoredom, and robbery, and licentiousness; and the bane of piety, and common civility, and humanity. Not that every soldier cometh to this pass; the hottest pestilence killeth not all; but oh how hard is it to keep up a life of faith and godliness in an army! The greatness of their business, and