A92147:359
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. The Law permitteth the bestower of a benefit to interpret his own mind in the bestowing of a benefit, even as a King and State must expone their own Commission given to their Ambassador, so must the Estates expone whether they bestowed the Crown upon the first King conditionally or absolutely.
3. The Law permitteth the bestower of a benefit to interpret his own mind in the bestowing of a benefit, even as a King and State must expone their own Commission given to their Ambassadour, so must the Estates expone whether they bestowed the Crown upon the first King conditionally or absolutely.
For the 4th. if it stand, then must the people give to their first elected King a power to wast and destroy themselves, so as they may never control it, but only leave it to God and the King to reckon together, but so the condition is a Chimera (We give you a Throne, upon condition you swear by him who made heaven and earth, that you will govern us according to Gods Law; and you shall be answerable to God only, not to us, whether you keep the covenant you make with us▪ or violate it;) but how a covenant can be made with the people, and the King obliged to God, not to the people, I conceive not. 2. This presupposeth that the King as King cannot do any sin, or commit any act of tyranny against the people, but against God only; because if he be obliged to God only as a King by virtue of his covenant: How can he fail against an obligation where there is no obligation? but as a King he owe no obligation of duty to the people, and indeed so do our good men expound that Psal. 51. Against thee, thee only have I sinned, not against Uriah; for if he sinned not as King against Uriah, whose life he was obliged to conserve as a ⟨p. 92⟩King, he was not obliged as a King by any royal duty to conserve his life. Where there is no sin, there is no obligation not to sin, and where there is no obligation not to sin, there is no sin: By this the King as King is loosed from all duties of the second Table, being once made a King, he is above all obligation to love his neighbour as himself, for he is above all his neighbours, and above all mankind, and only less then God.