A92147:1096
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.
Answ. The question is not if God may make permissive Laws to oppress the innocent; I grant he may do it, as he may command Abraham to kill his son Isaac; and Abraham by Law is obliged to kill him, except God retract his Commandment, and whether God retract it, or no, he may intend to kill his son, which is an act of love and obedience to God; but this were more then a permissive Law. 2. We have a clear Scripture for a permissive Law of divorce,1 and it was not a Law tending to the universal destruction of a whole Kingdom, or many Kingdoms, but only to the grievance of some particular wives: but the Law of divorce gave not power to all husbands to put away their wives, but only to the husband, who could not command his affection to love his wife. But this law of the King, is a Catholic law to all Kings, (for ⟨p. 396⟩Royalists will have all Kings so absolute, as it is sin and disobedience to God to resist any) that all Kings have a divine law to kill all their subjects; surely, then it were better for the Church to want such nurse-fathers, as have absolute power to suck their blood: and for such a perpetual permissive Law continuing to the end of the world, there is no word of God. Nor can we think that the hardness of one Princes heart, can be a ground for God to make a Law so destructive to his Church and all mankind: such a permissive Law, being a positive Law of God, must have a word of Christ for it, else we are not to receive it. 2. Arnisaeus cap. 4. distru. Tyrant. & princ. n. 16. thinketh a Tyrant, in excercito, becoming a notorious Tyrant, when there is no other remedy may be removed from government, sine magno scelere, without great sin. But I ask how men can annul any divine Law of God, though but a permissive Law. For if Gods permissive Law warrant a Tyrant to kill two innocent men, it is tyranny more or less, and the Law distinguisheth not. 3. This permissive Law is expressly contrary to Gods Law, limiting all Kings Deut. 17. 16, 17, 18. How then are we to believe, that God would make an universal Law contrary to the Law that he established before Israel had a King? 4. What Brentius saith is much for us, for he calleth this [Greek or Hebrew] Law a licence, and so to use it must be licentiousness. 5. Arnisaeus desireth that Kings may use sparingly the plenitude of their power, for public good;