A57975:626
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.
1Object. 2. Doct. Ferne. A King may not, or cannot easily alter the frame of fundamental Laws, he may make some actual invasion, in some transient, and not fixed acts; and it is safer to bear these, then to raise a civill War of the Body, against the Head.
1Object. 2. Doct. Ferne. A King may not, or cannot easily alter the frame of fundamentall Laws, he may make some actuall invasion, in some transient, and not fixed acts; and it is safer to bear these, then to raise a civill Warre of the Body, against the Head.
- 1Ferne, part. 3. sect. 5. pag. 39.
Answ. 1. If the King as King, may alter any one wholesome Law, by that same reason he may alter all. 2. You give short wings to an Arbitrary Prince,1 if he cannot over fly all Laws to the subversion of the Fundamentals of a State, if you make him as you do. 1. One who hath the sole Legislative power, who allanerly by himself, maketh Laws, and his Parliament and Counsel are only to give him advice, which by Law he may as easily reject, as they can speak words to him. He may in one transient act (and it is but one) cancel all Laws made against idolatry and Popery, and command, through bad Counsel, in all his Dominions; the Pope to be acknowledged as Christs Vicar, and all his doctrine to be established as the Catholic true Religion. It is but one transient act to seal a pardon to the shedding of the blood of two hundred thousand, killed by Papists. 2. You make him a King, who may not be resisted in any case; and though he subvert all Fundamental Laws, he is countable to God only, his people have no remedy, but prayers, or flight.
Answ. 1. If the King as King, may alter any one wholesome Law, by that same reason he may alter all. 2. You give short wings to an Arbitrary Prince,