A92147:318
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.
as it is a judgement of God, that Israel's without a King for many days, Hos. 3. 4. and that there is no Ju•ge, no King, to put evil doers to shame, Judg. 19. 1. but if a King be given of God, as a King by the acts of a bloody Conquest to be avenged on the sinful land over which he is made a King, he cannot be given, actu primo, as a special gift and blessing of God to feed, but to murder and to destroy; for the genuine end of a Conqueror, as a Conqueror, is not peace, but fire and sword. If God change his heart to be of a bloody Vastator, a father, Prince, and feeder of the people, ex officio, now he is not a violent Conqueror and he came to that meekness by contraries, which is the proper work of the omnipotent God, and not proper to man, who as he cannot work miracles, so neither can he lawfully work by contraries: and so if Conquest be a lawful title to a Crown, and an ordinary calling, as the opponents presume; every bloody Conqueror ⟨p. 86⟩must be changed into a loving father, Prince and feeder; and if God call him, none should oppose him, but the whole Land should dethrone their own native Sovereign (whom they are obliged before the Lord to defend) and submit to the bloody invasion of a strange Lord, presumed to be a just Conqueror, as if he were lawfully called to the Throne both by birth and the voices of the people. And truly they deserve no wages, who thus defend the Kings Prerogative royal: for if the sword be a lawful title to the crown, suppose the two Generals of both Kingdoms should conquer the most and the chiefest of the Kingdom now when they have so many forces in the field, by this wicked reason the one should have a lawful call of God to be King of England, and the other to be King of Scotland; which is absurd. 6. Either conquest, as conquest, is a just title to1 the crown, or as a just conquest. If as Conquest, then all conquests are just titles to a Crown; then the Ammonites, Zidonians, Canaanites, Edomites, &c. subduing Gods people for a time, have just title2 to reign over them; and if Absalom had been stronger then David, he had then had the just title to be the Lords Anointed and King of Israel, not David; and so strength actually prevailing, should be Gods lawful call to a Crown. But strength, as strength victorious, is not law, nor reason: