A92147:319
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.
it were then reason that Herod behead Jo•• Baptist, and the Roman Emperors kill the witnesses of Christ Jeus. If Conquest, as just, be the title and lawful claim before Gods court, to a Crown; then certainly a stronger King for pregnant national injuries, may lawfully subdue and reign over an innocent posterity not yet borne. But what word of God can, 1. warrant a posterity not borne, and so accessory to no offence against t•e Conqueror (but only sin original) to be under a Conqueror against their will, and who hath no right to reign over them, but the bloody sword? for so Conquest, as Conquest, not as just, maketh him King over the posterity. But 2. the fathers may engage the1 posterity by an oath to surrender themselves as loyal subject▪ to the man who justly and deservedly made the fathers vassals by the title of the sword of justice. I answer, the fathers may indeed dispose of the inheritance of their children, because that inheritance belongeth to the father as well ar to the son; but because the liberty of the son being borne with the son, (all men being bo•ne free from all Civill subjection) the father hath no more power to resign the liberty of his children, then their lives; and the father, as a father ⟨p. 87⟩hath not power of the life of his child, as a Magistrate he2 may have power, and as something more then a father, he may have power of life and death. I hear not what Grotius saith, Those who are not borne have no accidents, and so no rights, Non entis nulla sunt accidentia; then Children not borne have neither right, nor liberty, and so no injury (may some say) can be done to Children not borne, though the fathers should give away their liberty to the conqueror, those who are not capable of Law, are not capable of injury contrary to Law. Ans. There is a virtual alienation of rights and lives of children not borne unlawful, because the children are not borne; to say that children not borne, are not capable of law and injuries virtual, which become real in time might say, Adam did not an injury to his posterity by his first sin, which is contrary to Gods Word: so those who vowed yearly to give seven innocent children to the Minotaur to be devoured, and to kill their children not borne to bloody Molech, did no acts of bloody injury to their children;