A92147:1355
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. 9. Why, if God might work a miracle in the three Children's resistance active; why doth he evidence omnipotency in the passive obedience of these Witnesses? The Kingdom of Judah was Christs birthright, as man, and Davids son: why did he not, by legions of Men & Angels, rather vindicate his own flesh and blood, than triumph by non-resistance, and the omnipotency of glory to shine in his mere suffering?] Ans. Who art thou that disputest with God? He that killeth with the jaw-bone of an Ass, thousands; 1and he that destroyed the numberless Midianites by only three hundred, should no more put the three Children to an unlawful fact in the one, if they had by three men killed Nebuchadnezzar and all his Subjects, than in the other. But nothing is said against us in a Sophisme à non-causa pro causa; except it be proved, God would neither deliver his three Children, nor Christ from death, and the Jews from bondage, by miraculous resistance, because resistance is unlawful. What? patient suffering is lawful; Ergo resistance is ⟨p. 457⟩unlawful. It is a poor consequent, and a begging of the question, both must be lawful to us. And so we hold, of ten lawful means fit to compass Gods blessed end, he may choose one, and let go nine: shall any infer, ergo, These other nine means are unlawful, because God chose a mean, different from those nine, and refused them, So may I answer by retortion. The three hundred sinned in resisting Midian, and defeating them: Why? Because it should be more honour to God, if they had, by suffering patiently the sword of Midian, glorified God in Martyrdom. So Christ and the Apostles, who could have wrought miracles, might have wrought Reformation by the sword, and destroyed Kings and Emperors, the opposers of the Lamb: and they did reform by suffering; Ergo, the sword is unlawful in Reformation. It followeth not. The mean Christ used, is lawful; Ergo, all other means that he used not, are unlawful, It is vain Logic.
Quest. 9. Why, if God might work a miracle in the three Childrens resistance active; why doth he evidence omnipotencie in the passive obedience of these Witnesses? The Kingdome of Iudah was Christs birthright, as man, and Davids sonne: why did he not, by legions of Men & Angels, rather vindicate his own flesh and blood, than triumph by non-resistance, and the omnipotencie of glorie to shine in his meere suffering?] Ans. Who art thou that disputest with God? He that killeth with the jaw-bone of an Asse, thousands;