Christian Nonresistance: In All Its Important Bearings: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1610861.Christian_Non_Resistance?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=TuZN24MbmY&rank=1
Aiden Ballou quote from "Christian Nonresistance in All its Important Bearings:"
As constituent supporters of human government, ( whether civil or military, or a compound of both -) in its state or national sovereignty, men are morally responsible for all constitutions, institutions, laws, processes, and usages, which they have pledged themselves to support, or which they avowedly approve, or which they depend upon as instrumentalities for securing and promoting their personal welfare, or in which they acquiesce without positive remonstrance and disfellowship. Thus if a political compact, a civil or military league, covenant, or constitution, requires, authorizes, provides for, or tolerates war, bloodshed, capital punishment, slavery, or any kind of absolute injury - offensive or defensive, the man who swears, affirms, or otherwise pledges himself to support such a compact, league, covenant, or constitution, is just as responsible for every act of injury done in strict conformity thereto, as if he himself personally committed it. He is not responsible for abuses and violations of the constitution.
But for all that is constitutionally done he is responsible. The army is his army, the navy his navy, the militia his militia, the gallows his gallows, the -^ pillory his pillory, the whipping-post his whipping-post, the branding-iron his branding-iron, the prison to prison, the dungeon his dungeon, and the slaveholding his slaveholding. When the constitutional majority declare war, it is his war. All the slaughter, rapine, ravages, robbery, destruction, and mischief committed under that declaration, in accordance with the laws of war, are his. Nor can he exculpate himself by pleading that he was one of a strenuous anti-war minority in the government. He was in the government. He had sworn, affirmed, or otherwise pledged himself, that the majority should have discretionary power to declare war. He tied up his hands with that anti-Christian obligation, to stand by the majority in all the crimes and abominations inseparable from war. It is therefore his war, its murders are his murders, its horrible injuries on humanity are his injuries. " They are all committed with his solemn sanction. There is no escape from this terrible moral responsibility but by a conscientious withdrawal from such government, and an uncompromising protest against so much of its fundamental creed and constitutional law, as is decidedly anti-Christian. He must cease to be its pledged supporter and approving dependent.
