A57975:335
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.
3. The Law permitteth the bestower of a benefit to interpret his own mind in the bestowing of a benefit, even as a King and State must expone their own Commission given to their Ambassador, so must the Estates expone whether they bestowed the Crown upon the first King conditionally or absolutely.
3. The Law permitteth the bestower of a benefit to interpret his own mind in the bestowing of a benefit, even as a King and State must expone their own Commission given to their Ambassadour, so must the Estates expone whether they bestowed the Crown upon the first King conditionally or absolutely.
For the 4th. if it stand, then must the people give to their first elected King a power to wast and destroy themselves, so as they may never control it, but only leave it to God and the King to reckon together, but so the condition is a Chimera (We give you a Throne, upon condition you swear by him who made heaven and earth, that you will govern us according to Gods Law; and you shall be answerable to God only, not to us, whether you keep the covenant you make with us, or violate it;) but how a covenant can be made with the people, and the King obliged to God, not to the people, I conceive not. 2. This presupposeth that the King as King cannot do any sin, or commit any act of tyranny against the people, but against God only; because if he be obliged to God only as a King by virtue of his covenant: How can he fail against an obligation where there is no obligation? but as a King he owe no obligation of duty to the people, and indeed so do our good men expound that Psal. 51. Against thee, thee only have I sinned, not against Uriah; for if he sinned not as King against Uriah, whose life he was obliged to conserve as a ⟨p. 92⟩King, he was not obliged as a King by any royal duty to conserve his life. Where there is no sin, there is no obligation not to sin, and where there is no obligation not to sin, there is no sin. By this the King as King is loosed from all duties of the second Table, being once made a King, he is above all obligation to love his neighbour as himself, for he is above all his neighbours, and above all mankind, and only less then God.