A92147:192
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.
Judge of the Prelates subtlety, I dare say, not his own, he1 stealeth from Spalato, but telleth not, The applying of the person to Royal authority, is from the people; but the applying of Royal authority to the person of the King, is immediately and only from God: as the hand putteth the faggot to the fire, but the fire maketh it burn. To apply the subject to the accident, is it any thing else but to apply the accident to the subject? Royal authority is an accident, the person of the King the subject: the applying of the faggot to the fire, and the applying of the fire to the faggot, are all one, to any not forsaken of common sense. When the people applieth the person to the royal authority, they but put the person in the state of royal authority; and this is to make an union betwixt the Man and royal authority; and this is to apply royal authority to the person. 5. The third sense is the Prelates dream, not a Tenet of ours; we never said ⟨p. 20⟩that sovereignty in the King is immediately from God by approbation or confirmation only, as if the people first made the King, and God did only by a posterior and latter act say Amen to the deed done, and subscribe, as Recorder, to what the people doth: so the people should deal kingdoms and crowns at their pleasure, and God behoved to ratify and make good their fact. When God doth apply the person to royal power, what? is this a different action from the peoples applying the person to royal dignity? It is not imaginable: but the people by creating a king, applieth the person to royal dignity; and God by the peoples act of constituting the man king, doth by the mediation of this act convey royal authority to the man, as the Church by sending a man, and ordaining him to be a Pastor, doth not by that, as Gods instruments, infuse supernatural powers of preaching: these powers supernatural may be, and often are in him before he be in orders; and sometimes God infuseth a supernatural power of government in a man, when he is not yet a king, as the Lord turned Saul into another man, 1 Sam. 10. 5. 6. neither at that point of time when Samuel anointed him, but after that, v. 5. After that thou shalt come to the hill of God, 6. the spirit of the Lord shall come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man.