A92147:1352
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. 6. Whether absolute and unlimited power of Royalty, be a ray and beam of Divine Majesty, immediately derived from God?] Answ. Not at all: Such a creature is not in the world of Gods creation: Royalists, and flatterers of Kings, are parents to this prodigious birth. There is no shadow of power, to do ill, in God: An absolute power is, essentially, a power to do without or above Law, and a power to do ill, to destroy: and so it cannot come from God, as a Moral power, by institution; though it come from God by a ⟨p. 456⟩flux of permissive providence: but so things unlawful and sinful come from God.
Quest. 6. Whether absolute and unlimited power of Royaltie, be a ray and beame of Divine Majestie, immediately derived from God?] Answ. Not at all: Such a creature is not in the world of Gods creation: Royalists, and flatterers of Kings, are parents to this prodigious birth. There is no shadow of power, to doe ill, in God: An absolute power is, essentially, a power to do without or above Law, and a power to doe ill, to destroy: and so it cannot come from God, as a Morall power, by institution; though it come from God by a ⟨p. 456⟩flux of permissive providence: but so things unlawfull and sinfull come from God.
Quest. 7. Whether the King may, in his actions, intend his own Prerogative and Absoluteness?] Answ. He can neither intend it as his nearest end, nor as his remote end. Not the former: for if he fight, and destroy his People for a Prerogative, he destroyeth his People, that he may have a power to destroy them, which must be mere Tyranny, nor can it be his remote end; for granting that his supposed absolute Prerogative were lawful, he is to refer all lawful Power, and all his actions to a more noble end, to wit, to the safety and good of the People.1
Quest. 7. Whether the King may, in his actions, intend his owne Prerogative and Absolutenes?] Answ. He can neither intend it as his nearest end, nor as his remote end. Not the former: for if he fight, and destroy his People for a Prerogative, he destroyeth his People, that he may have a power to destroy them, which must be meere Tyranny, nor can it be his remote end; for granting that his supposed absolute Prerogative were lawfull, he is to referre all lawfull Power, and all his actions to a more noble end, to wit, to the safetie and good of the People.