A92147:267
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.
Ans. Whether the King and the under Magistrate differ essentially,1 we shall see. The P. Prelate saith all Politicians grant it, but he saith untruth; he bringeth Moses, and the Judges, their power to prove the power of Kings; and so either the Judges of Israel and the Kings differ not essentially, or then the Prelate must correct the spirit of God terming one book of Scripture [Greek or Hebrew] Kings, and another [Greek or Hebrew] Judges, and make the book of Kings the book of Judges. 2. The Magistrates condition is not better then the Kings, because the Magistrate is to judge by an known Statute and ⟨p. 62⟩Law, and the King not so. God moulded the first King, Deut. 17. 18. when he sitteth judging on his Throne, to look to a written Copy of the Law of God, as his rule. Now a power to follow Gods Law is better then a power to follow mans sinful will: so the Prelate putteth the King in a worse condition then the Magistrate, not we, who will have the King to judge according to just statutes and laws. 3. Whether the King be censurable and deposable by the multitude, he cannot determine out of our writings. 4. The communities law is the law of nature, not their arbitrary lust. 5. The Prelates treasonable railings, I cannot follow; he first saith, that we agree not ten of us to a positive faith, and that our faith is negative, but his faith is Privative, Popish, Socinian, Arminian, Pelagian and worse, for he was once of that same faith that we are of. 2. Our Confession of Faith is positive, as the confession of all the reformed Churches, but I judge he thinketh the Protestant Faith of all the reformed Churches but negative. 3. The incommodities of Government before our reformation were not fancied, but printed by Authority, all the body of Popery was printed, and avowed as the Doctrine of the Church of Scotland and England, as the learned Author, and my much respected brother evidenceth in his Ludensium, [Greek or Hebrew], The Canterburian self conviction. 4. The Parliament of England was never yet found guilty of Treason. 5. The good Counsellors of great States-men, that Parliaments of both Kingdoms would take from the Kings Majesty, are a faction of perjured Papists, Prelates, Jesuits, Irish cut-throats, Strafford's, and Apostate subverters of all Laws divine, humane, of God, of Church, of State.