A92147:1255
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.
QUEST. XLIII. Whether the King of Scotland be an absolute Prince, having Prerogatives above Parliament and Laws? The Negative is asserted by the Laws of Scotland, the Kings Oath of Coronation, the Confession of Faith &c.
QUEST. XLIII. Whether the King of Scotland be an absolute Prince, having Prerogatives above Parliament and Laws? The Negative is asserted by the Lawes of Scotland, the Kings Oath of Coronation, the Confession of Faith &c.
The negative part of this, I hold, in these Assertions.
THe negative part of this, I hold, in these Assertions.
Assert. 1. The Kings of Scotland have not any Prerogative1 distinct from Supremacy above the Laws. 1. If the People must be governed by no Laws, but by the Kings own Laws, that is, the Laws and Statutes of the Realm acted in Parliament, under pain of disobedience; then must the King govern by no other Laws, and so by no Prerogative above Law. But the former is an evident truth, by our Acts of Parliament; ergo, so is the latter. The Proposition is confirmed; 1. Because what ever Law enjoineth passive obedience no way but by Laws; that must enjoin also the King actively to command no other way but by Law: for to be governed by Law, essentially includeth, to be governed by the Supreme Governor, only by Law. 2. An act of Regal governing, is an act of Law, and essentially an act of Law; an act of absolute Prerogative is no act of Law, but an act above Law, or of pleasure loosed from ⟨p. 434⟩Law; and so they are opposed as acts of Law, and non-acts of Law. If the Subjects, by command of the King and Parliament, cannot be governed but by Law; How can the King but be under his own, and the Parliaments Law, to govern only by Law? I prove the Assumption from Parl. 3. of K. James the 1. Act 48. Ordains, That all and sundry the Kings Lieges be governed under the Kings Laws and Statutes of the Realm allanerly, and under no particular Laws, or special Privileges, nor by any Laws of other Countries or Realms. Privileges do exclude Laws: Absolute pleasure of the King, as a Man, and the Law of the King as King, are opposed by way of contradiction: and so in Parl. 6. K.