A57975:854
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.
What ever falleth under a positive Commandment of God, I may say here, under any Commandment of God, is not a thing under the freewill and power of others, from whom we are not descended necessarily by natural generation, but that men of the world kill me, even these from whom I am not descended by natural generation (which I speak to exclude Adam, who killed all his posterity) is not in my free will, either as if they had my common nature in that act, or as if I wer• accessory by counsel, consent, or approbation to that act, for this is under the free-will and power of others, not under my own free-will: Ergo, that I suffer by others is not under my free-will, and cannot fall under a Commandment of God: And certainly, it is an irrational Law, (glorified be his name) that God should command Antipas either formally to suffer, or formally not to suffer death by these of the Synagogue of Satan, Revel. 2.13. because if they be pleased not to kill him, it is not in his free-will to be killed by them; and if they shall have him in their power (except God extraordinarily deliver) it is not in his power, in an ordinary providence, not to be killed. 2. All these places of Gods word, that recommendeth suffering to the followers of Christ, do not command formally that we suffer; Ergo, suffering falleth not formally under any Commandment of God; I prove the Antecedent, because i• they be considered, they prove only that comparatively we are to choose rather to suffer, then to deny Christ before men, Mat. 10.28, 32. Revel. 2.13. Mat. 10.37. Mat. 16.24. c. 19.29. ⟨p. 318⟩or then they command not suffering according to the substance of the passion,1 but according to the manner, that we suffer willingly, cheerfully, and patiently. Hence Christs word to take up his Cross, which is not a mere passion, but commendeth an act of the virtue of patience. Now no Christian virtue consisteth in a mere passion, but in laudable habits, and good and gracious acts, and the Text we are now on,