A57975:621
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.
1The King as the King is an unerring and living Law, and by grant of Barclay, of old was one of excellent parts, and noble through virtue and goodness; and the goodness of a father as a father, of a tutor as a tutor, of a head as a head, of a husband as a husband do agree to the King as the King, so as King he is the Law it self, commanding, governing, saving. 2. His Will as King, or his Royal Will is reason, conscience, Law. 3. This Will is politicly present (when his person is absent) in all Parliaments, Courts, and inferior Judicatures. 4. The King as King cannot do wrong or violence to any. 5. Amongst the Romans the name King and Tyrant were common to one thing. 1. Because de facto, some of their Kings were Tyrants, in respect of their Dominion, rather then Kings. 2. Because he who was a Tyrant De facto, should have been, and was a King too de jure. 6. It is not lawful to either disobey or resist a King as a King, no more then it is lawful to disobey a good Law. 7. What violence, what unjustice, and excess of passion the King mixeth in, with his Acts of Government, are merely accidental to a King as King! for because men by their own innate goodness will not, yea Morally cannot do that which is lawful, and just one to another, and do naturally, since the fall of man, ⟨p. 113⟩violence one to another; therefore, if there had not been sin, there should not have been need of a King, more then there should have been need of a Tutor to defend the child, whose father is not dead, or of a Physician to cure sickness where there is health; for remove sin, and there is neither death nor sickness, but because sin is entered into the world, God devised, as a remedy of violence and unjustice, a living, rational breathing Law called a King,2 a Judge, a Father: now the aberrations, violence, and oppression of this thing which is the living, rational, breathing Law is no Medium, no mean intended by God, and nature to remove violence. How shall violence remove violence? Therefore an unjust King, as unjust, is not that genuine ordinance of God, appointed to remove unjustice, but accidental to a King. So we may resist the unjustice of the King, and not resist the King. 8, If then any cast off the nature of a King, and become habitually a Tyrant, in so far he is not from God, nor any ordinance which God doth own: