A92147:308
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.
Doct. Fern is so far with us to father Royalty upon the peoples1 free election, as on the formal cause▪ that he saith, If to design the person, and to procure limitation of the power in the exercise of it, be to give the power; we grant the power is from the people, but (saith he) you will have the power originally from themselves; in another sense, for you say, they reserve power to depose and displace the Magistrate, sometime they make the Monarch supreme, and then they devest ⟨p. 81⟩themselves of all power, and keep none to themselves, but before established Government, they have no politic power, whereby they may lay a command on others, but only a natural power of private resistance, which they cannot use against the Magistrate.
Doct. Fern is so farre with us to father Royaltie upon the peoples1 free election, as on the formall cause▪ that he saith, If to design the person, and to procure limitation of the power in the exercise of it, be to give the power; we grant the power is from the people, but (saith he) you will have the power originally from themselves; in another sense, for you say, they reserve power to depose and displace the Magistrate, sometime they make the Monarch supreme, and then they devest ⟨p. 81⟩themselves of all power, and keep none to themselves, but before established Government, they have no politique power, whereby they may lay a command on others, but onely a naturall power of private resistance, which they cannot use against the Magistrate.
- 1D. Fern, part 3. sect. •. p. 14.