that hate you,
and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. For if ye
love them which love you, what reward have you? do not even the
Publicans the same? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which
is in heaven is perfect." Now the Quakers are of opinion, that no man
can receive this doctrine his heart, and assist either offensively or
defensively in the operations of war.

[Footnote 5: Matt. v. 38.]

[Footnote 6: The Heathen nations, on account of their idolatry, were
called enemies by the Jews.]

Other passages, quoted by the Quakers, in favour of their tenet on war,
are taken from the apostles Paul and James conjointly.

The former, in his[7] second epistle to the Corinthians, says, "For
though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: For the
weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the
pulling down of strong holds, to the casting down imaginations, and
every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and
bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." From
hence the Quakers argue, that the warfare of Christianity, or that which
Christianity recognises, is not carnal, but spiritual, and that it
consists in the destruction of the evil imaginations, or of the evil
lusts and passions of men. That is, no man can be a true soldier of
Christ, unless his lusts are subdued, or unless the carnal be done away
by the spiritual mind. Now this position having been laid down by St.
Paul, or the position having been established in Christian morals, that
a state of subjugated passions is one of the great characteristic marks
of a true Christian, the Quakers draw a conclusion from it by the help
of the words of St. James. This apostle, in his letter to the dispersed
tribes, which were often at war with each other, as well as with the
Romans, says,[8] "From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come
they not hence even of your lusts that war in your members?" But if wars
come from the lusts of men, then the Quakers say, that those who have
subdued their lusts, can no longer engage in them, or, in other words,
that true Christians, being persons of this description, or being such,
according to St. Paul, as are redeemed out of what St. James calls the
very grounds and occasions of wars, can no longer fight. And as this
proposition is true in itself, so the Quakers conceive the converse of
it to be true also: For if there are perso