A57975:876
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.
The grounds of self-defence are these; A woman or a young man may violently oppose a King, if he force the one to adultery and incest, and the other to Sodomy; Though Court-flatterers should say, the King in regard of his absoluteness is Lord of life and death; yet no man ever said, that the King is Lord of chastity, faith, and oath that the wife hath made to her husband.
The grounds of self-defence are these; A woman or a young man may violently oppose a King, if he force the one to adultery and incest, and the other to Sodomy; Though Court-flatterers should say, the King in regard of his absolutenesse is Lord of life and death; yet no man ever said, that the King is Lord of chastity, faith, and oath that the wife hath made to her husband.
2. Particular nature yields to the good of universal nature,1 for which cause heavy bodies ascend, aerie and light bodies descend; If then a wild Bull or a goring Ox, may not be let loose, in a great market-confluence of people; and if any man turn so distracted, as he smite himself with stones and kill all that pass by him, or come at him; in that case the man is to be bound, and his hands fettered, and all whom he invadeth may resist him, were they his own sons, and may save their own lives with weapons; much more a King turning a Nero: King Saul vexed with an evil spirit from the Lord, may be resisted; and fa•re more if a King endued with use of reason, shall put violent hands on all his subjects, kill his son and heir; yea, any violently invaded, by natures law, may defend themselves, and the violent restraining of such an one is but the hurting of one man, who cannot be virtually the Common-wealth; but his destroying of the community of men sent out in wars, as his bloody emissaries, to the dissolution of the Common-wealth.
2. Particular nature yeelds to the good of universall nature,1