A92147:215
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.
Answ. 1. By this reason, inferior Judges are no less immediate ⟨p. 31⟩Deputies of God, and so irresistible, then the Kings, because God took off the spirit that was on Moses, and immediately poured it upon the seventy Elders, who were Judges inferior to Moses, Num. 11. 14. 15. 16. Answ. 2. This P. P. cannot make a Syllogism: If all the acts necessary to make a King, be given to God, none to the people; then God both constituteth and designeth the King. But the former the Scripture saith, ergo, if all the acts be given to God, as to the prime King-maker, and disposer of Kings and Kingdoms, and none to the people in that notion, then God both constituteth and designeth a King. Both major and minor is false. The major is as false as the very P. Prelate himself. All the acts necessary for war making, are in an eminent manner given to God, as 1. the Lord fighteth for his people. 2. The Lord scattered the enemies. 3. The Lord slew Og King of Bashan. 4. The battle is the Lords. 5. The victory the Lords; ergo, Israel never fought a battle. So Deut. 32. The Lord alone led his people; the Lord led them in the wilderness; their bow and their sword gave them not the land: God wrought all their works for them, Esa 26. 12. ergo, Moses led them not; ergo, the people went not on their own legs through the wilderness; ergo, the people never shot an arrow, never drew a sword. It followeth not. 1. God did all these as the first, eminent, principal and efficacious pre-determinator of the creature, (though this Arminian and Popish Prelate mind not so to honour God.) 2. The assumption is also false; for the people made Saul and David Kings; and it were1 ridiculous, that God should command them to make a brother, not a stranger King, if it was not in their power whether he should be a Jew, a Scythian, an Ethiopian, who was their King, if God did only without them both choose, 2. constitute, 3. design the person, and perform all acts essential to make a King, and the people had no more in them but only to admit and consent, and that for the solemnity and pomp, not for the essential constitution of the King. 3. 1 Sam. 9. 17.