A92147:251
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.
Ergo, All Governments, except Democracy, or Government by the people, must be sinful and unlawful. 1. Because Government by Kings is of Divine institution, and of other Judges also, as is evident by Gods Word, Rom. 13. 1, 2, 3. Deut. 17. 14. Prov. 8. 15, 16. 1 Pet. 2. 13, 14. Psal. 2. 10, 11, &c. 2. Power of choosing any form of Government, is in the people: Ergo, There is no Government lawful, but popular Government; it followeth no ways, but presupposeth that power to chose any form of Government, must be formally actual Government, which is most false, yea, they be contrary, as the prevalency or power, and the act are contrary, so these two are contrary, or opposite; neither is Sovereignty, nor any Government formally inherent in either the Community, by nature, ⟨p. 54⟩nor in any one particular man, by nature; and that every man is born free, so as no man, rather then his brother, is born a King and1 Ruler, I hope, God willing to make good, so as the Prelate shall never answer on the contrary. 3. It followeth not, that the Posterity living, when their Fathers made a Covenant with their first elected King, may without any breach of Covenant on the Kings part, make void and null their Fathers election of a King, and chose another King, because the lawful Covenant of the Fathers in point of Government, if it be not broken, tieth the children; but it cannot deprive them of their lawful liberty naturally inherent in them to chose the fittest man to be King: But of this hereafter more fully. 4. Spalato addeth, (the Prelate is not a faithful thief) If the Community by the Law of nature, have power of all forms of Government, and so should be, by nature, under popular Government, and yet should refuse a Monarchy, and an Aristocracy; yet Augustine addeth, If the people should prefer their own private gain to the public good, and sell the Common-wealth, then some good man might take their liberty from them, and against their will erect a Monarchy, or an Aristocracy: But 1. the Prelate and Augustine, supposeth the people to be under Popular Government; this is not our case, for Spalato and the Prelate presupposeth by our grounds, that the people by nature, must be under Popular Government; Augustine dreameth no such thing, and we deny that by nature, they are under any form of Government. 2.