mpetency of power must be had, according to the
ordinary way of Providence, in relation to which we must act, except we
would tempt God by requiring of him wonders.(352)

_Answer._ Suppose the enemy's army to consist of 20,000 or above, are
there not more fencible persons in the shires on the north side of Forth?
Believe it who please we cannot stop our own consciences, and put out our
own eyes. Let the rolls of several shires be looked to, and it shall
confute that testimony. Nay, are there not more persons not formerly
secluded, in all those shires? What meant the levy appointed immediately
after Dunbar? Was not 10,000 foot, and 1,400 horse put upon these shires
which are not under the power of the enemy, and yet the rules of exclusion
were not abandoned? Now all these, or most part of them, are yet in the
country not levied. Money was taken instead of men, the levies obstructed
so that there was little addition to the strength of the forces that
remained, the forces diverted by the insurrection of the malignants in the
north, at the King's command or warrant,--all which hath such pregnant
presumption of a design carried on to necessitate the kingdom to employ
that party, by the cunning politicians of the time, by obstructing the
levies, raising the malignants, and then pacifying them by an act of
indemnity, and at last openly and avowedly associating with them. Thus the
design is accomplished which was long since on foot.

2. If satisfying courses had been studied by the public judicatories to
carry on all the godly in the land with their resolutions, there had
accrued strength from the parts of the land be south Forth, which would
have compensated all that competency of power that the conjunction of the
malignants makes up and, it may be, would have been more blessed of God.
3. If there be no help required nor expected from those parts of the
kingdom be south Forth, wherefore did the commission write to the
presbyteries in those bounds that they might concur actively in their
stations for the furtherance of the levies, and choose ministers to go out
with them?

III. It is answered. That the confederacies reproved were unlawful,
because they were either with heathens, or with idolaters, strangers, and
foreigners. This is answered to the case of Amaziah, &c., and so it seems
not to make against the present case, the employing all subjects in the
just and necessary defence of the kingdom.(353)

_Answer 1_. This answ