The Law and the Prince (1644),
Whether or no self-defence against any unjust violence offered to the life, be warranted by God’s Law, and the law of nature and nations.
Self-preservation in all creatures in which is nature, is in the creatures suitable to their nature. The bull defendeth itself by its horns, the eagle by her claws and bill, it will not follow that a lamb will defend itself against a wolf any other way than by flying. So men, and Christian men, do naturally defend themselves; but the manner of self-defence in a rational creature is rational, and not always merely natural; therefore, a politic community, being a combination of many natures, as neither grace, far less can policy, destroy nature, then must these many natures be allowed of God to use a natural self-defence. If the king bring in an army of foreigners, then a politic community must defend itself in a rational way. Why? Self-defence is natural to man, and natural to a lamb, but not the same way. A lamb or a dove naturally defend themselves against beasts of another kind only by flight, not by re-action and re-offending; but it followeth not that a man defendeth himself from his enemy only by flight. If a robber invade me, to take away my life and my purse, I may defend myself by re-action; for reason and grace both may determine the way of self-preservation.
Objection: Flight is the only means of self-defense.
Hence Royalists say, a private man against his prince hath no way to defend himself but by flight; therefore, a community hath no other way to defend themselves but by flight.
1. Tyrannous powers may be resisted.
1. The antecedent is false. Dr. Ferne alloweth to a private man supplications, and denying of subsidies and tribute to the prince, when he employeth tribute to the destruction of the commonwealth; which, by the way, is a clear resistance, and an active resistance made against the king (Rom. 13:6-7) and against a commandment of God, except Royalists grant tyrannous powers may be resisted.
2. Three stages of self-defense: 1. Supplication, 2. Flight, 3. Fight.
2. The consequence is naught, for a private man may defend himself against unjust violence, but not any way he pleaseth. The first way is by supplications and apologies—he may not presently use violence to the king’s servants before he supplicate, nor may he use re-offending, if flight may save. David used all the three in order. He made his defence by words, by the mediation of Jonathan [1 Sam. 20:1-34]. When that prevailed not, he took himself to flight, as the next [1 Sam. 20:42]. But because he knew flight was not safe every way, and nature taught him self-preservation, and reason and light of grace taught him the means, and the religious order of these means for self-preservation, therefore he addeth a third, He took Goliath’s sword, and gathered six hundred armed men and after that made use of an host [1 Sam. 21:8-9; 22:10; 23:13]. Now a sword and armour are not horsing and shipping for flight, but contrary to flight; so re-offending is policy’s last refuge.
A godly magistrate taketh not away the life of a subject if other means can compass the end of the law, and so he is compelled and necessitated to take away the life. So the private man, in his natural self-defence, is not to use re-action, or violent re-offending, in his self-defence against any man, far less against the servants of a king, but in the exigence of the last and most inexorable necessity. And it is true that M. Symmons saith, (sect. ll, p. 35), “Self-defence is not to be used where it cannot be without sin.” It is certain, necessity is but a hungry plea for sin (Luke 14:18), but it is also true, re-offending comparatively, that I kill rather than I be killed, in the sinless court of nature’s spotless and harmless necessity, is lawful and necessary, except I be guilty of self-murder, in the culpable omission of self-defence. Now a private man may fly, and that is his second necessity, and violent re-offending is the third mean of self-preservation. But, with leave, violent re-offending is necessary to a private man, when his second mean, to wit, flight, is not possible, and cannot attain the end, as in the case of David: if flight do not prevail, Goliath’s sword and an host of armed men are lawful.
So, to a church and a community of Protestants—men, women, aged, sucking children, sick, and diseased, who are pressed either to be killed or forsake religion and Jesus Christ—flight is not the second mean, nor a mean at all, because not possible, and therefore not a natural mean of preservation. For the aged, the sick, the sucking infants, and sound religion in the posterity cannot flee—flight here is physically, and by nature’s necessity, impossible, and therefore no lawful mean. What is to nature physically impossible is no lawful mean. If Christ have a promise that the ends of the earth (Psal. 2:8) and the isles shall be his possession (Isa. 49:1), I see not how natural defence can put us to flee—even all Protestants and their seed, and the weak and sick, whom we are obliged to defend as ourselves, both by the law of nature and grace. I read that seven wicked nations and idolatrous were cast out of their land to give place to the church of God to dwell there [Deut. 7:1; Acts 13:19], but show me a warrant in nature’s law and in God’s Word that three kingdoms of Protestants, their seed, aged, sick, sucking children, should flee out of England, Scotland, Ireland, and leave religion and the land to a king and to Papists, Prelates, and bloody Irish, and atheists. And therefore to a church and community having God’s right and man’s law to the land, violent re-offending is their second mean (next to supplications and declarations, etc.) and flight is not required of them as of a private man. Yea flight is not necessarily required of a private man, but where it is a possible mean of self-preservation. Violent and unjust invasion of a private man, which is unavoidable, may be obviated with violent re-offending. Now the unjust invasion made on Scotland in 1640, for refusing the service-book, or rather the idolatry of the Mass, therein intended, was unavoidable. It was impossible for the Protestants, their old and sick, their women and sucking children to flee over sea, or to have shipping betwixt the king’s bringing an army on them at Dunse Law, and the Prelates’ charging of the ministers to receive the mass book. Althusius saith well (Politica c. 38, n. 78), “Though private men may flee, yet the estates, if they flee, they do not do their duty, to commit a country, religion and all, to a lion.“
Let not any object, “We may not devise a way to fulfill the prophecy [of] Psal. 2:8-9 & Isa. 49:1;” it is true, if the way be our own sinful way; nor let any object, “a colony went to New England and fled the persecution.” Answer, True, but if fleeing be the only mean after supplication, there was no more reason that one colony should go to New England than it is necessary, and by a divine law obligatory, that the whole Protestants in the three kingdoms, according to Royalists’ doctrine, are to leave their native country and religion to one man, and to popish idolaters and atheists, willing to worship idols with them, and whither then shall the gospel be, which we are obliged to defend with our lives?
Near vs. Remote Self-Defense.
There is tutela vitae proxima, et remota, a mere and immediate defence of our life, and a remote or mediate defence. When there is no actual invasion made by a man seeking our life, we are not to use violent re-offending. David might have killed Saul when he was sleeping, and when he cut off the lap of his garment, but it was unlawful for him to kill the Lord’s anointed, because he is the Lord’s anointed, as it is unlawful to kill a man, because he is the image of God (Gen. 9.6), except in case of necessity. The magistrate in case of necessity may kill the malefactor, though his maleficus [nefariousness] do not put him in that case, that he hath not now the image of God. Now prudence and light of grace determineth, when we are to use violent re-offending for self-preservation, it is not left to our pleasure.
In a remote posture of self-defence, we are not to use violent re-offending: David having Saul in his hand was in a remote posture of defence, the unjust invasion then was not actual, not unavoidable, not a necessary mean in human prudence for self-preservation; for king Saul was then in a habitual, not in an actual pursuit of the whole princes, elders, and judges of Israel, or of a whole community and church. Saul did but seek the life of one man, David, and that not for religion, or a national pretended offence, and therefore he could not in conscience put hands on the Lord’s anointed. But if Saul had actually invaded David for his life, David might, in that case, make use of Goliath’s sword (for he took not that weapon with him as a cypher to boast Saul—it is no less unlawful to threaten a king than to put hands on him), and rather kill or be killed by Saul’s emissaries. Because then he should have been in an immediate and nearest posture of actual self-defence.
Now the case is far otherwise between the king and the two Parliaments of England and Scotland, for the king is not sleeping in his emissaries, for he hath armies in two kingdoms, and now in three kingdoms, by sea and land, night and day, in actual pursuit, not of one David, but of the estates, and a Christian community in England and Scotland, and that for religions, laws, and liberties. For the question is now between Papist and Protestant, between arbitrary or tyrannical government, and law government, and therefore by both the laws of the politic societies of both kingdoms, and by the law of God and nature, we are to use violent re-offending for self-preservation, and put to this necessity, when armies are in actual pursuit of all the Protestant churches of the three kingdoms, to actual killing, rather than we be killed, and suffer laws and religion to be undone.
Objection: David’s example proves the king cannot be resisted.
But, saith the Royalist, David’s argument, “God forbid that I stretch out my hand against the Lord’s anointed, my master the king” [1 Sam. 24:6], concludeth universally, that the king in his most tyrannous acts, still remaining the Lord’s anointed, cannot be resisted.
Ans.—1. David speaketh of stretching out his hand against the person of king Saul: no man in the three kingdoms did so much as attempt to do violence to the king’s person. But this argument is inconsequent, for a king invading, in his own royal person, the innocent subject, suddenly, without colour of law or reason, and unavoidably, may be personally resisted, and that with opposing a violence bodily, yet in that invasion he remaineth the Lord’s anointed.
2. By this argument the life of a murderer cannot be taken away by a judge, for he remaineth one indued with God’s image, and keepeth still the nature of a man under all the murders that he doth, but it followeth nowise, that because God hath endowed his person with a sort of royalty, of a divine image, that his life cannot be taken; and certainly, if to be a man endued with God’s image (Gen. 6:9-10), and to be an illdoer worthy of evil punishment, are different, to be a king and an ill-doer may be distinguished.
The Grounds of Self-Defense.
The grounds of self-defence are these:
1. Argumentum a fortiori.
1. A woman or a young man may violently oppose a king, if he force the one to adultery and incest, and the other to sodomy. Though court flatterers should say, the king, in regard of his absoluteness, is lord of life and death—yet no man ever said that the king is lord of chastity, faith, and oath that the wife hath made to her husband.
2. Particular nature yields to the good of universal nature.
2. Particular nature yields to the good of universal nature, for which cause heavy bodies ascend, airy and light bodies descend. If, then, a wild bull or a goring ox, may not be let loose in a great market-confluence of people—and if any man turn so distracted as he smite himself with stones and kill all that pass by him or come at him, in that case the man is to be bound, and his hands fettered, and all whom he invadeth may resist him, were they his own sons, and may save their own lives with weapons—much more a king turning a Nero. King Saul, vexed with an evil spirit from the Lord, may be resisted. And far more if a king endued with use of reason, shall put violent hands on all his subjects, kill his son and heir. Yea, and violently invaded, by nature’s law, may defend themselves, and the violent restraining of such a one is but the hurting of one man, who cannot be virtually the commonwealth, but his destroying of the community of men sent out in wars, as his bloody emissaries, to the dissolution of the commonwealth.
3. The safety of the whole is preferable to the safety of a part.
3. The cutting off of a contagious member, that by a gangrene would corrupt the whole body, is well warranted by nature, because the safety of the whole is to be preferred to the safety of a part.
Nor is it much that Royalists say, ‘The king being the head, destroy him, and the whole body of the commonwealth is dissolved; as cut off a man’s head, and the life of the whole man is taken away.‘ Because,
1. God cutteth off the spirits of tyrannous kings, and yet the commonwealth is not dissolved, no more than when a leopard or a wild boar, running through children, is killed, can be the destruction of all the children in the land.
2. A king indefinitely is referred to the commonwealth as an adequate head to a monarchical kingdom; and remove all kings and the politic body, as monarchical, in its frame, is not monarchical, but it leaveth not off to be a politic body, seeing it hath other judges; but the natural body without the head cannot live.
3. This or that tyrannous king, being a transient mortal thing, cannot be referred to the immortal commonwealth, as it is adequate correlate. They say, “the king never dieth,” yet this king can die. An immortal politic body, such as the commonwealth, must have an immortal head, and that is a king as a king, not this or that man, possibly a tyrant, who is for the time (and eternal things abstract from time) only a king.
4. Love thy neighbor as thyself.
4. The reason of Fortunius Garcias, a skillful lawyer in Spain, is considerable: God hath implanted in every creature natural inclinations and motions to preserve itself, and we are to love ourselves for God, and have a love to preserve ourselves rather than our neighbour. And nature’s law teacheth every man to love God best of all, and next ourselves more than our neighbour, for the law saith, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”  Then saith Malderius, “The love of ourselves is the measure of the love of our neighbour.”  But the rule and the measure is more perfect, simple, and more principal than the thing that is measured. It is true I am to love the salvation of the church, it cometh nearer to God’s glory, more than my own salvation, as the wishes of Moses and Paul do prove [Ex. 32:32; Rom. 9:3]. And I am to love the salvation of my brother more than my own temporal life. But I am to love my own temporal life more than the life of any other, and therefore, I am rather to kill than to be killed, the exigence of necessity so requiring. Nature without sin owneth this as a truth, in the case of loss of life, Proximus sum egomet mihi [I am closest to myself]. “He that loveth his wife, loveth himself; for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth it, and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church” (Eph. 5:28-29).
As then nature tieth the dam to defend the young birds, and the lion her whelps, and the husband the wife, and that by a comparative re-offending, rather than the wife or children should be killed; yea, he that his wanting to his brother (if a robber unjustly invade his brother), and helpeth him not, is a murderer of his brother, so far God’s spiritual law requiring both conservation of it in our person, and preservation in others. The forced damsel was commanded to cry for help, and not the magistrate only, but the nearest private man or woman was to come, by an obligation of a divine law of the seventh commandment, to rescue the damsel with violence [Deut. 22:24, 27], even as a man is to save his enemy’s ox or his ass out of a pit [Deut. 22:4]. And if a private man may inflict bodily punishment of two degrees, to preserve the life and chastity of his neighbour, far rather than suffer his life and chastity to be taken away, then he may inflict violence of four degrees, even to killing, for his life, and much more for his own life.
So when a robber, with deadly weapons, invadeth an innocent traveler to kill him for his goods, upon the supposition that if the robber be not killed, the innocent shall be killed. Now the question is, which of the two, by God’s moral law and revealed will, in point of conscience, ought to be killed by his fellow? For we speak not now of God’s eternal decree of permitting evil, according to the which murderers may crucify the innocent Lord of glory. By no moral law of God should the unjust robber kill the innocent traveler. Therefore, in this exigence of providence, the traveler should rather kill the robber.
Objection: Don’t kill, just wound.
If any say, by God’s moral law no one should kill his fellow, and it is a sin against the moral law in either to kill the other, I answer:
If a third shall come in when the robber and the innocent are invading each other for his life, all acknowledge by the sixth commandment the third may cut off the robber’s arm to save the innocent. But by what law of God he may cut off his arm, he may take his life also to save the other. For it is murder to wound unjustly, and to dismember a man by private authority, as it is to take away his life. If, therefore, the third may take away the robber’s member, then also his life, so he do it without malice or appetite of revenge, and if he may do it out of this principle, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Because a man is obliged more to love his own flesh than his neighbour’s (Eph. 5:28), and so more to defend himself than to defend his neighbour,—then may he oppose violence to the robber.
As two men drowning in a water, the one is not obliged by God’s law to expose himself to drowning to save his neighbour. But by the contrary, he is obliged rather to save himself, though it were with the loss of his neighbour’s life. As in war, if soldiers in a strait passage be pursued on their life, nature teacheth them to flee. If one fall, his fellow in that exigence is not only not obliged to lift him up, but he and the rest flying, though they trample on him and kill him, they are not guilty of murder, seeing they hated him not before (Deut. 19:4, 6). So Chemnitz  alloweth private defence:
1. When the violence is sudden.
2. And the violence manifestly inevitable.
3. When the magistrate is absent and cannot help.
4. When moderation is kept as lawyers require.
1. That it be done incontinent. If it be done after the injury, it is revenge, not defence.
2. Not of desire of revenge.
3. With proportion of armour.  If the violent invader invade not with deadly weapons, you must not invade him with deadly weapons. And certainly the law of a man’s defending his house (Ex. 22) is clear: 1. If he come in the night, it is presumed he is a robber. 2. If he be taken with a weapon breaking the house, he cometh to kill, a man may defend himself, wife, and children. 3. But he is but to wound him, and if he die of the wound, the defender is free; so the defender is not to intend his death, but to save himself.
5. Defense against a private and public enemies.
5. It were a mighty defect in providence to man, if dogs by nature may defend themselves against wolves, bulls against lions, doves against hawks, if man, in the absence of the lawful magistrate, should not defend himself against unjust violence—but one man might raise armies of Papists, sick for blood, to destroy innocent men.
Objection: The equity of self-defense against a private attacker does not legitimize resistance to a tyrant.
They object, “When the king is present in his person, and his invaders, he is not absent, and so though you may rather kill a private man than suffer yourself to be killed, yet, because prudence determineth the means of self-defence, you are to expose your life to hazard for justice of your king, and therefore not to do violence to the life of your king. Nor can the body, in any self-defence, fight against the head, that must be the destruction of the whole.”
1. Though the king be present as an unjust invader in wars against his innocent subjects, he is absent as a king, father, and defender, and present as an unjust conqueror—and therefore the innocent may defend themselves when the king neither can, nor will defend them. “Nature maketh a man (saith the law), even a private man, his own judge, magistrate, and defender, quando copiam judicis, qui sibi jus reddat, non habet, when he hath no judge to give him justice and law.” 
2. The subjects are to give their lives for the king, as the king, because the safety of the king, as king, is the safety of the commonwealth. But the king, as offering unjust violence to his innocent subjects, is not king. 
3. If the politic body fight against this head in particular, not as head, but as an oppressor of the people, there is no fear of dissolution. If the body rise against all magistracy, as magistracy and laws, dissolution of all must follow. Parliaments and inferior judges are heads (Num. 1:16; 10:4; Deut 1:15; Josh. 22:21; Mic. 3:1, 9, 11; 1 Kings 8:1; 1 Chron. 5:25; 2 Chron. 5:2), no less than the king. And it is unlawful to offer violence to them, though I shall rather think a private man is to suffer the king to kill him rather than he kill the king, because he is to prefer the life of a private man to the life of a public man.
6. The purpose of rulers.
6. By the law of nature a ruler is appointed to defend the innocent. Now, by nature, an infant in the womb defendeth itself first, before the parents can defend it, then when parents and magistrates are not (and violent invading magistrates are not in that magistrates), nature hath commended every man to self-defence.
7. Unjust violence from a ruler is double injustice.
7. The law of nature excepteth no violence, whether inflicted by a magistrate or any other. Unjust violence from a ruler is double injustice. 1. He doth unjustly as a man. 2. As a member of the commonwealth. 3. He committeth a special kind of sin of injustice against his office, but it is absurd to say we may lawfully defend ourselves from smaller injuries, by the law of nature, and not from the greater. “If the Pope,” saith Fer. Vasquez “command to take away benefices from the just owner, those who are to execute his commandment are not to obey, but to write back that that mandate came not from his holiness, but from the avarice of his officers; but if the Pope still continue and press the same unjust mandate, the same should be written again to him: and though there be none above the Pope, yet there is natural self-defence patent for all.” 
Objection: What ground is there to take arms against the king?
But what ground (saith the Royalist) is there to take arms against the king? Jealousies and suspicions are not enough.
Ans.—1. The king sent first an army to Scotland, and blocked us up by sea, before we took arms. 2. Papists were armed in England. They have professed themselves in their religion of Trent to be so much the holier, that they root out Protestants. 3. The king declared we had broken loyalty to him since the last Parliament. 4. He declared both kingdoms rebels. 5. Attempted in his emissaries to destroy the Parliament, 6. And to bring in a foreign enemy. And the law saith, “An imminent danger, which is a sufficient warrant to take up arms, is not strokes, but either the terror of arming or threatening.” 
8. In most heinous sins, the endeavour and aim is punishable.
[8.] In most heinous sins, the endeavour and aim (conatus) is punishable; etiamsi effectus non sequatur, puniri debet. 
The king hath aimed at the destruction of his subjects, through the power of wicked counselors, and we are to consider not the intention of the workers, but the nature and intention of the work. Papists are in arms,—their religion, the conspiracy of Trent, their conscience (if they have any), their malice against the covenant of Scotland, which abjureth their religion to the full, their ceremonies, their Prelates,—lead and necessitate them to root out the name of Protestant religion. Yea, and to stab a king who is a Protestant. Nor is our king, remaining a Protestant, and adhering to his oath made at the coronation in both kingdoms, lord of his own person, master of himself, nor able, as king, to be a king over Protestant subjects, if the Papists, now in arms under his standard, shall prevail.
The king hath been compelled to go against his own oath, and the laws which he did swear to maintain. The Pope sendeth to his popish armies both dispensations, bulls, mandates, and encouragements. The king hath made a cessation with the bloody Irish, and hath put arms in the hands of Papists. Now, he being under the oath of God, tied to maintain the Protestant religion, he hath a metaphysically subtle, piercing faith of miracles, who believeth armed Papists and Prelates shall defend the religion of Protestants. And those who have abjured Prelates as the lawful sons of the Pope, that ὁ ἀντίχριστος [“that antichrist“, 1 John 2:18] and as the law saith, Charity believeth not ill, so charity is not a fool to believe all things.  So saith the law, Once wicked, is always wicked in that kind.  Marius Salamonius, We are not to wait on strokes, the terror of armour, by consent of all (omnium consensu), is sufficient. “If I see (saith he) the enemy take an arrow out of the quiver, before he bend the bow, it is lawful to prevent him with a blow—cunctatio est periculosa.” 
The king’s coming with armed men into the House of Commons to demand the five members, is very symbolical, and war was printed on that fact, “he that runneth may read.” His coming to Hull with an army, saith not he had no errand there, but to ask what it was in the clock. Novellus, that learned Venetian lawyer, in a treatise for defence, maketh a continued upbraiding (continuatam rixam), a sufficient ground of violent defence. He citeth Dr Comniter: Yea, he saith, drunkenness, error, madness, ignorance, impudence, necessity, laciviousness, continual reproaches, the fervour of anger, threatening, fear of imminent danger, and just grief, do excuse a man from homicide, and that in these he ought to be more mildly punished, reason in these being lame and clogged (quia obnubilatum et mancum est consilium).  Ambrose saith, “whoever does not ward off a blow from a fellow man when he can, is as much in fault as the striker.”  And as nature, so the law saith, “When the losses are such as can never be repaired, as death, mutilation, loss of chastity, things of that kind once done, can never be undone, we are to prevent the enemy (quoniam facta infecta fieri nequeunt).”  If the king send an Irish rebel to cast me over a bridge, and drown me in a water, I am to do nothing, while the king’s emissary first cast me over, and then in the next room I am to defend myself; but nature and the law of self-defence warranteth me (if I know certainly his aim), to horse him first over the bridge, and then consult how to defend myself at my own leisure.
Objection: David didn’t attack Saul.
Royalists object that David, in his defence, never invaded and persecuted Saul. Yea, when he came upon Saul and his men sleeping, he would not kill any. But the Scottish and Parliament’s forces not only defend, but invade, offend, kill, and plunder. And this is clearly an offensive, not a defensive war.
1. Offensive vs. Defensive War.
Ans. 1. There is no defensive war different in specie and nature from an offensive war. If we speak physically, they differ only in the event and intention of the heart. And it is most clear that the affection and intention doth make one and the same action of taking away the life, either homicide, or no homicide. 1. If a man, out of hatred, deliberately take away his brother’s life, he is a murderer eatenus [to such a degree]. But if that same man had taken away that same brother’s life, by the flying off of an axe-head off the staff, while he was hewing timber, he neither hating him before, nor intending to hurt his brother, he is no murderer, by God’s express law (Deut. 4:42; 19:4; Joshua 20:5). 2. The cause between the king and the two Parliaments, and between Saul and David, are so different in this, as it is much for us. Royalists say, David might, if he had seen offending to conduce for self-preservation, have invaded Saul’s men, and, say they, the case was extraordinary, and bindeth not us to self-defence. And thus they must say—for offensive weapons, such as Goliath’s sword, and an host of armed men, cannot by any rational man be assumed (and David had the wisdom of God) but to offend, if providence should so dispose. And so what was lawful to David, is lawful to us in self-defence—he might offend lawfully, and so may we.
2. Saul’s aim was different.
2. If Saul and the Philistines, aiming (as under an oath) to set up Dagon in the land of Israel, should invade David, and the princes and elders of Israel who made him king. And if David, with an host of armed men, he and the princes of Israel, should come in that case upon Saul and the Philistines sleeping. If in that case David might not lawfully have cut off the Philistines, and as he defended in that case God’s church and true religion. If he might not then have lawfully killed, I say, the Philistines, I remit to the conscience of the reader. Now to us, Papists and Prelates under the king’s banner, are Philistines, introducing the idolatry of bread-worship and popery, as hateful to God as Dagon-worship.
3. Saul wasn’t conquering the people.
3. Saul intended no arbitrary government, nor to make Israel a conquered people, nor yet to cut off all that professed the true worship of God. Nor came Saul against these princes, elders, and people, who made him king, only David’s head would have made Saul lay down arms. But Prelates, Papists, and malignants, under the king, intend to make the king’s sole will a law, to destroy the court of Parliament, which putteth laws in execution against their idolatry. And their aim is that Protestants be a conquered people. And their attempt hath been hitherto to blow up king and Parliament, to cut off all Protestants. And they are in arms, in divers parts of the kingdom, against the princes of the land, who are no less judges and deputies of the Lord than the king himself. And would kill, and do kill, plunder, and spoil us, if we kill not them. And the case is every way now between armies and armies, as between a single man unjustly invaded for his life, and an unjust invader. Neither in a natural action, such as is self-defence, is that of policy to be urged,—none can be judge in his own cause, when oppression is manifest: one may be both agent and patient, as the fire and water conflicting. There is no need of a judge, a community casts not off nature. When the judge is wanting, nature is judge, actor, accused, and all.
Lastly, no man is lord of the members of his own body, nor lord of his own life, but is to be accountable to God for it. 
1. A Primer on Self-Defense by Mike Ericson, “We must consider and take to heart the relation between the right to self defense and, for those capable, the duty of it.“
2. Initial Analysis of Murders in White Settlement TX Church (video) by Active Self Protection, This video “is meant to educate in technical and tactical applications of church safety for all houses of worship.“
 Comment. in l. ut vim vi ff. de justit. et jure.
 Com. in 12, q. 26, tom. 2, c. 10, concl. 2.
 Loc. com. de vindic. q. 3.
 “In English statutes, armor is used for the whole apparatus of war; including offensive as well as defensive arms. The statutes of armor directed what arms every man should provide, 27. Hen. II. and of Westminster. Hence armor includes all instruments of war.” (Webster 1828).
 Gener. c. de decur. l. 10, l. si alius. sect. Bellissime ubique Gloss. in vers. ex magn. not. per. illum. text. ff. quod vi aut clam. l. ait prætor. sect. si debitorem meum. ff. de hisque in fraud. credito.
 Zoannet. (part 3, defens. n. 44,)—Transgrediens notorie officium suum judex, agit velut privatus aliquis, non ut magistratus (ff. de injur. est bonus in simili in. l. qui fundum. sect. si. tutor. ff. pro emptore).
 Illust. quest. l. 1, c. 24, n. 24, 25. “Defensio vitæ necessaria est, et a jure naturali profluit,” (L. ut vim. ff. de just. et jure 16,) “ Nam quod quisque ob tutelam corporis sui fecerit, jure fecisse videatur,” (C. jus naturale, 1 distinc. l. 1, ff. de vi et vi armata, l. injuriarum, ff. de injuria: C. significasti. 2, de hom. l. scientiam, sect. qui non aliter ff. ad leg. Aquil; C. si vero 1, de sent. excom. et l. sed etsi ff. ad leg. Aquil.) “ Etiamsi sequatur homicidium.” Vasquez. (l. 1, c. 17, n. 5.)—“Etiam occidere licet ob defensionem rerum. Vim vi repellere omnia jura permittunt in C. significasti.” Garcias Fortunius (Comment. in l. ut vim. ff. de instit. et jur. n. 3.) —“ Defendere se est juris naturæ, et gentium. A jure civili fuit additum moderamen inculpatæ tutelæ.” Novel (defens. n. 101.)—“ Occidens principem vel alium tyrannidem exercentem, a pæna homicidii excusatur.” Grotius (de jure belli et pacis, l. 2, c. 1, n. 3.)—“ Si corpus impetatur vi presente, cum periculo vitæ non aliter vitabili, tunc bellum est licitum etiam cum interfectione periculum inferentis, ratio, natura quemque sibi commendat.” Barclaius (advers. Monar. l. 3, c. 8.)—“ Est jus cuilibet se tenendi adversus immanem sevitiam.”
 Glossator. (in d. l. 1, C.)—“Unde vi. ait non esse verbera expectanda, sed vel terrorem armorum sufficere, vel minas, et hoc esse imminens periculum.” L. sed et si quemcunque in princ. ff. ad leg. Aquil l. 3, quod qui armati ff. de vi et vi armata is qui aggressorem C. ad legem Corneli.
 Bartol. in l. “Si quis non dicam rapere.”
 Quilibet in dubio praesumitur bonus. L. merito praesumi. L. non omnes, sect. a Barbaris de re milit.
 Semel malus, semper præsumitur malus, in eodem genere. C. semel malus de jure gentium in 6.
 l. C. in L. ut vim atque injuriam ff. de just et jure.
 in L. ut vim. ff. de just et jure. defens. n. 44-67.
 Ambros. l. 1. offic.; Qui non repellit injuriam a socio, cum potest, tam est in vitio, quam ille qui facit.
 l. Zonat. tract. defens. par. 3, l. in bello sect. factæ de capit. notat. Gloss. in l. si quis provocatione.
 m. l. liber homo ff. ad leg. Aqui.