A92147:362
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.
But the people are given to the King to be tutored and protected of him, so as they remain the people of God, and in covenant with him, and if the people were the goods of fortune (as Heathens say) he could no more sin against the people then a man can sin against his gold; now though a man by adoring gold, or by lavish profusion and wasting of gold may sin against God, yet not against gold; nor can he be in any covenant with gold, or under any obligation of either duty or sin to gold, or to lifeless and reasonless creatures properly, therefore he may sin in the use of them, and yet not sin against them, but against God. Hence of necessity the King must be under obligation to the Lords people in another manner, then that he should only answer to God, for the loss of men, as if men were worldly goods under his hand, and as if being a King he were now by this Royal Authority privileged from the best▪half of the law of nature, to wit, from acts of mercy, and truth, and covenant keeping with his brethren.1
But the people are given to the King to be tutored and protected of him, so as they remaine the people of God, and in covenant with him, and if the people were the goods of fortune (as Heathens say) he could no more sinne against the people then a man can sin against his gold; now though a man by adoring gold, or by lavish profusion and wasting of gold may sin against God, yet not against gold; nor can he be in any covenant with gold, or under any obligation of either duty or sin to gold, or to livelesse and reasonlesse creatures properly, therefore he may sin in the use of them, and yet not sin against them, but against God. Hence of necessity the King must be under obligation to the Lords people in another manner, then that he should only answer to God, for the losse of men, as if men were worldly goods under his hand, and as if being a King he were now by this Royall Authority priviledged from the best▪halfe of the law of nature, to wit, from acts of mercy, and truth, and covenant keeping with his brethren.1
- 1The King could not buy or sell, borrow or contract debt if his covenant with men did not bind him.