A92147:1369
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. 19. Whether the Subjects be obliged to pay the debts of the King?] Answ. These debts which the King contracteth as King, in Throno Regali, the people are to pay; For the Law of nature, and the divine Law doth prove, That to every servant and Minister, wages is due, Rom. 13. 5, 6. compared with Vers. 4. and 1 Cor. 9. 9, 10, 11, 12. 1 Tim. 5. 18. If the Prince be taken in a war, for the defence of the people, it is just that he be redeemed by them: So the Law saith, Tit. F. & C. de negotiis gestis, & F. & C. Manda. But when Fer. Vasquius illust. quest. l. 1. c. 7. n. 6. Vicesimo tertio apparet, &c.—saith, If the Prince was not doing the business of the public, and did make war without advice, and consent of the people, then are they not to redeem him. Now certain it is, when the King raiseth war, not only against his Oath, and saith, God do ⟨p. 465⟩so •o me and mine, if I intend any thing but peace, yet maketh war, and also raiseth war without consent of the Parliament, and a Parliament at that time convocated by his own Royal Writ, and not raised, and dissolved at all, but still sitting formally a Parliament; if he borrow money from his own Subjects, and from foreign Princes, to raise war against his Subjects and Parliament, then the1 people are not obliged to pay his debts, 1. Because they are obliged to the King only as a King, and not as an enemy: But in so raising war, he cannot be considered as a King. 2. Though, if the people agree with him, and still acknowledge him King; it is unpossible, Physicè, he can be their King, and they not pay his debts, yet they sin not, but may, ex decentia, non ex debito legali, pay his debts, yet are they not obliged by any Law of God, or man to pay his debts; but though it be true, by all Law the King be obliged to pay his debt, (except we say, that all the peoples goods, are the Kings, a compendious way, I confess, to pay all that any voluptuous Heliogabolus shall contract) yet it may easily be proved, That what his subjects and foreign Princes lent him to the raising of an unjust war, are not properly debts, but expenses unjustly given out under the reduplication of formal enemies to the Country, and so not payable by the Subjects;