-- Tit. 2. Motives to love and do good to enemies
Answ. Kings and states are bound to it as much as private men: and therefore must observe the foresaid law of love as well as others.
Therefore they must raise no war unnecessarily, nor for any cause be it never so just in itself, when the benefits of the war are not like to be a greater good, than the war will bring hurt both to friends and foes set together. A lawful offensive war is almost like a true general council; on certain suppositions such a thing may be; but whether ever the world saw such a thing, or whether ever such suppositions will come to existence, is the question.
Tit. 2. Motives to Love and do Good to Enemies Mot. I. God loveth his enemies, and doth them good; and he is our best exemplar. "But I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Mot. II. Jesus Christ was incarnate to set us a pattern, especially of this virtue: he sought the salvation of his enemies: he went up and down doing good among them. He died for his enemies: he prayeth for them even in his sufferings on the cross: he wept over them when he foresaw their ruin. When he was reviled, he reviled not again. This is the pattern which we must imitate.
Mot. III. God loved even us ourselves when we were his enemies: or else what had become of us? And Christ died even for us, as enemies, to reconcile us by his death to God. Therefore we are specially obliged to this duty.
Mot. IV. To be God's enemies is to be wicked and unlovely; so that in such God could see nothing amiable, but our nature and those poor remainders of virtue in it, and our capacity of being made better by his grace; and yet he then loved us: but to be an enemy to you or me,