Section IV.

That It Is Not Lawful For The Well Affected Subjects To Concur In Such An
Engagement In War, And Associate With The Malignant Party.

Some convinced of the unlawfulness of the public resolutions and
proceedings, in reference to the employing of the malignant party, yet do
not find such clearness and satisfaction in their own consciences as to
forbid the subjects to concur in this war, and associate with the army so
constituted. Therefore it is needful to speak something to this point,
That it is as unlawful for the subjects to associate and join in arms with
that party as it is for the parliament to employ them. For these reasons:

1. The scriptures before cited against associations and confederacies with
wicked and ungodly men do prove this. The command prohibiting conjunction
with them and conversing, &c. is common both to magistrates and people,
for the ground of it is common to both--The people's insnaring, helping of
the ungodly, &c. It were strange doctrine to say, that it is not lawful
for the parliament to associate in war with the malignants, lest the
people be insnared and yet it is lawful for the people to associate with
them upon the command of the parliament, seeing the insnaring of the
people hath a more immediate connexion with the people's conjunction with
them nor(388) with the parliament's resolution about it. Had it not been a
transgression in all the people to have joined with these men before the
parliament's resolution about it? How then can their resolution
intervening loose the people from their obligation to God's command? Shall
it be no sin to me, because they sin before me? Can their going before me
in the transgression, exempt me from the transgression of that same law
which obliges both them and me? 2. The people were reproved for such
associations as well as rulers, though they originated from the rulers.
The prophets speak to the whole body. "What hast thou to do in the way of
Egypt?" &c. Jer. ii. 18. And Isa. xxxi. "Wo to them that go down to
Egypt." Psal. cvi. "They mingled themselves," &c. The Lord instructed
Isaiah, and in him all his own people, all the children whom God had given
him, saying, "Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people
shall say, A confederacy," Isa. viii. 12. When all the people were going
on in such a mean of self defence, the Lord instructed him and the
disciples among whom the testimony was sealed, that t