A92147:300
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.
7. Argument. Where God hath not bound the conscience, men may not bind themselves, or the consciences of the posterity. But God hath not bound any nation irrevocably, and unalterably to a Royal Line, or to one kind of Government. Ergo, No nation can bind their conscience, and the conscience of the posterity, either to one Royal Line, or irrevocably and unalterably to Monarchy. The proposition is clear.
7. Argument. Where God hath not bound the conscience, men may not binde themselves, or the consciences of the posterity. But God hath not bound any nation irrevocably, and unalterably to a Royall Line, or to one kinde of Government. Ergo, No nation can binde their conscience, and the conscience of the posterity, either to one Royall Line, or irrevocably and unalterably to Monarchy. The proposition is clear.
1. No Nation is tied, jure divine, by the tie of a divine Law to a Monarchy, rather then to another Government. The Parisian Doctors prove, That the precept of having a Pope is affirmative, and so tieth not the Church, ad semper, for ever; and so the Church is the body of Christ without the Pope; and all oaths to things of their nature indifferent, and to things, the contrary whereof is lawful, and may be expedient and necessary, lay on a tie only conditionally, in so far, as they conduce to the end. If the Gibeonites had risen in Joshua's days, to cut off the people of God, I think no wise man can think, that Joshua and the people were tied by the oath of God, not to cut off the Gibeonites in that case: For to preserve them a live as enemies, was against the intent of the oath▪ which was to preserve them alive, as friends demanding, and supplicating peace, and submitting. The assumption is clear If a Nation seeth that Aristocratical Government is better then Monarchy, hic & nunc: That the sequels of such a Monarchy is bloody, destructive, tyrannous, that the Monarchy compelleth the free subjects to Turkism, to gross Idolatry, they cannot by the divine bond of any oath captive their natural freedom, which is to choose a Government, and Governors, for their safety, for a peaceable and godly life; or fetter and chain the wisdom of the posterity unalterably to a Government, or a Royal Line, which hic & nunc, contrary to the intention of their oath, proveth destructive, and bloody. And in this case, even the King, though tied by an oath to govern, is obliged to the practices of the Emperor Otho. And as Speed saith, of Richard the second, to resign the Crown, for the