A57975:217
Lex, Rex
Lex, rex The law and the prince : a dispute for the just prerogative of king and people : containing the reasons and causes of the most necessary defensive wars of the kingdom of Scotland and of their expedition for the aid and help of their dear brethren of England : in which their innocency is asserted and a full answer is given to a seditious pamphlet entitled Sacro-sancta regum majestas, or, The sacred and royal prerogative of Christian kings, under the name of J. A. but penned by Jo. Maxwell the excommunicate P. Prelate. : with a scriptural confutation of the ruinous grounds of W. Barclay, H. Grotius, H. Arnisœus, Ant. de Domi P. Bishop of Spalata, and of other late anti-magistratical royalists, as the author of Ossorianum, D. Fern, E. Symmons, the doctors of Aberdeen, &c. : in XLIV questions.Lex, rex The law and the prince : a dispute for the just prerogative of king and people : containing the reasons and causes of the most necessary defensive wars of the kingdom of Scotland and of their expedition for the ayd and help of their dear brethren of England : in which their innocency is asserted and a full answer is given to a seditious pamphlet intituled Sacro-sancta regum majestas, or, The sacred and royall prerogative of Christian kings, under the name of J. A. but penned by Jo. Maxwell the excommunicate P. Prelat. : with a scripturall confutation of the ruinous grounds of W. Barclay, H. Grotius, H. Arnisœus, Ant. de Domi P. Bishop of Spalata, and of other late anti-magistratical royalists, as the author of Ossorianum, D. Fern, E. Symmons, the doctors of Aberdeen, &c. : in XLIV questions.
London: printed for John Field, 1644London: printed for Iohn Field, 1644
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
QUEST. VIII. Whether the Prelate proveth by force of reason, that the people cannot be capable of any power of Government?
P. Prelate. God and nature giveth no power in vain, and which may not be reduced into action; but an active power, or a power of actual governing, was never acted by the Community; therefore this power cannot be seated in the Community as in the prime and proper subject; and it cannot be in every individual person of a Community, because Government intrinsically and essentially includeth a specified distinction of Governors, and some to be governed; and to speak properly, there can no other power be conceived in the Community naturally and properly, but only potestas passiva regiminis, a capacity or susceptibility to be governed, by one or by moe, just as the first matter desireth a form. This obligeth all, by the dictate of Natures law, to submit to actual government: and as it is in every individual person, it is not merely and properly voluntary, because howsoever nature dictates, that government is necessary for the safety of the society, yet every singular person, by corruption and self-love, hath a natural averseness and repugnancy to submit to any; every man would be a King himself: This universal desire, appetitus universalis aut naturalis, or universal propension to Government, is like the act of the understanding assenting to the first undeniable principles of truth, and to the wills general propension to happiness in general, which propension is not a free act, except our new Statists, as they have changed their faith, so they overturn true reason, it will puzzle them infinitely to make any thing in its kind passive, really active and collative of positive acts and effects. All know, no man can give what he hath not: an old Philosopher would laugh at him who would say, that a matter perfected and actuated by union, with a form, could at pleasure shake off its form, and marry it self to another: they may as well say, every wife hath power to resume her freedom, and marry another, as that any such power active is in the Community, or any power to cast off Monarchy.