A92147:1087
A treatise of civil policy
A treatise of civil policy: being a resolution of forty three questions concerning prerogative, right and privilege, in reference to the supreme prince and the people. / By Samuel Rutherford professor of divinity of St Andrews in Scotland.A treatise of civil policy: being a resolution of forty three questions concerning prerogative, right and priviledge, in reference to the supream prince and the people. / By Samuel Rutherford professor of divintiy of St Andrews in Scotland.
London, : Printed and are to be sold by Simon Miller at the Star in St Pauls Church-yard near the West end., 1657 i.e. 1656
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. If we suppose a King to be limited as Gods King is Deut. 17. 18, 19, 20. Yet is it his part to confer honours upon the worthiest. Now if he have no absoluteness of Majesty, he cannot confer honours out of a principle that is none at all, unum quodque sicut est, ita operatur, and if the people confer honours, then must Royalists grant that there is an absolute Majesty in the people, why then may they not derive Majesty to a King? and why then do Royalists talk to us of Gods immediate creating of Kings, without any intervening action of the people?
3. If we suppose a King to be limited as Gods King is Deut. 17. 18, 19, 20. Yet is it his part to confer honours upon the worthiest. Now if he have no absolutenesse of Majesty, he cannot confer honours out of a principle that is none at all, unum quodque sicut est, ita operatur, and if the people confer honours, then must Royalists grant that there is an absolute Majesty in the people, why then may they not derive Majesty to a King? and why then do Royalists talk to us of Gods immediate creating of Kings, without any interveening action of the people?
4. By this absoluteness of Majesty, Kings may play the Tyrant as Samuel 1 Sam. 8. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. foretelleth Saul would do. But I cannot believe that Kings have the same very official absolute power, from whence they do both acts of grace, goodness and justice, such as are to expone Laws extemporally in extraordinary cases, to confer honours upon good and excellent men of grace to pardon offenders upon good grounds, and also-do acts of extreme Tyranny: For out of the same fountain doth not proceed both sweet water and bitter. Then by this absoluteness, Kings cannot do acts of goodness, justice and grace, and so they must do good as Kings, and they must do acts of tyranny, as men, not from absoluteness of majesty.