A92147:1260
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.
4. Parliam. 12. K. James 6. Act. 114. All former Acts in favour of the true Church and Religion, being ratified, Their power of making Constitutions concerning [Greek or Hebrew] Order and Decency; the Privileges that God hath given to spiritual Office-bearers, as well of Doctrine and Discipline, in matters of Heresy, Excommunication, Collation, Deprivation, and such like, warranted by the Word of God, and also to Assembles and Presbyteries, are ratified. Now in that Parliament, in Acts so contiguous, we are not to think, That the King and three Estates, would make Acts for establishing the Churches power in all the former heads of Government; in which, Royalists say, The soul of the Kings Absolute Prerogative doth consist: And therefore it must be the true intent of our Parliament, to give the King a Supremacy and a Prerogative Royal (which we also give) but without any Absoluteness of boundless and transcendent power above Law; and not to obtrude a Service-Book, and all the Superstitious Rites of the Church of Rome, without Gods Word, upon us.
4. Parliam. 12. K. Iames 6. Act. 114. All former Acts in favour of the true Church and Religion, being ratified, Their power of making Constitutions concerning 〈non-Latin alphabet〉 Order and Decency; the Priviledges that God hath given to spirituall Office-bearers, as well of Doctrine and Discipline, in matters of Heresie, Excommunication, Collation, Deprivation, and such like, warranted by the Word of God, and also to Assembles and Presbyteries, are ratified. Now in that Parliament, in Acts so contiguous, we are not to think, That the King and three Estates, would make Acts for establishing the Churches power in all the former heads of Government; in which, Royalists say, The soul of the Kings Absolute Prerogative doth consist: And therefore it must be the true intent of our Parliament, to give the King a Supremacy and a Prerogative Royall (which we also give) but without any Absolutenesse of boundlesse and transcendent power above Law; and not to obtrude a Service-Book, and all the Superstitious Rites of the Church of Rome, without Gods Word, upon us.
5. The former Act of Parliament ratifieth the true Religion, according to the Word of God, then could it never have been the intent of our Parliament, to ratify an Absolute supremacy, according to which, a King might govern his people, as a Tyrannous Lion, contrary to