A92147:316
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.
3. Assert. Mere conquest by the sword without the consent of the people, is no just title to the Crown; 1. Because the lawful title that Gods Word holdeth forth to us, beside the Lords choosing and calling of a man to the Crown, is the peoples election, Deut. 17. 15. all that had any lawful calling to the Crown in Gods Word,1 as Saul, David, Solomon, &c. were called by the people, and the first lawful calling is to us a rule and pattern to all lawful callings. 2. A ⟨p. 84⟩King as a King, and by virtue of his Royal Office is the Father of2 the Kingdom, a Tutor, a Defender, Protector, a Shield, a Leader, a Shepherd, an Husband, a Patron, a Watchman, a Keeper of the people3 over which he is King, and so the Office essentially includeth acts of fatherly affection, care, love and kindness to those over whom he is set, so as he who is clothed with all these relations of love to the people, cannot exercise those official Acts on a people against their will, and by mere violence. Can he be a Father, and a Guide, a Patron to us against our will? and by the sole power of the bloody sword? a benefit conferred upon any against their will is no benefit: Will he, by the awesome dominion of the sword be our father, and we unwilling to be his sons? an head over such as will not be members? will he guide me as a Father, an Husband against my will? he cannot come by mere violence to be a Patton, a Shield, and a defender of me through violence. 3. It is4 not to be thought that, that is Gods just Title to a Crown which hath nothing in it of the essence of a King; but a violent and bloody purchase, which is in its prevalency in an oppressing Nimrod, and the cruellest tyrant that is, hath nothing essential to that which constituteth a King: for it hath nothing of Heroic and Royal wisdom and gifts to govern, and nothing of Gods approving and regulating will which must be manifested to any who would be a King, but by the contrary cruelty hath rather baseness and witless fury, and a plain reluctancy with Gods revealing Will, which forbideth murder, Gods Law should say, (Murder thou, and prosper and reign) and by the act of violating the sixth Commandment, God should declare his approving Will, to wit, his lawful call to a Throne. 4.