A92147:405
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.
That the power of the King is fiduciary, that is given to him1 immediately by God in trust, Royalists deny not; but we hold that the trust is put upon the King by the people. 2. We deny that the people give themselves to the King as a gift, for what is freely given cannot be taken again; but they gave themselves to the King as a pawn; and if the pawn be abused, or not used in that manner as it was conditionated to be used, the party in whose hand the pawn is entrusted, faileth in his trust.
THat the power of the King is fiduciarie, that is given to him1 immediatly by God in trust, Royallists deny not; but we hold that the t•ust is put upon the King by the people. 2. We deny that the people give themselves to the King as a gift, for what is freely given cannot be taken againe; but they gave themselves to the King as a pawne; and if the pawne be abused, or not used in that manner as it was conditionated to be used, the party in whose hand the pawne is intrusted, faileth in his trust.
- 1The Kings power fiduciary.The Kings power fiduciarie.
1. Assertion. The King is more properly a Tutor then a Father,1 1. Indigency is the original of Tutors, the Parents dye; what then shall become of the Orphan and his inheritance? he cannot guide it himself; therefore nature devised a Tutor to supply the2 place of a father, and to govern the Tutor; but with this consideration, the father is Lord of the inheritance, and if he be distressed, may sell it, that it shall never come to the son, and the father for the bad deserving of his son may dis-inherit him; but the Tutor being but a borrowed father, cannot sell the inheritance of the pupil, nor can he for the pupils bad deserving, by any dominion of Justice over the pupil, take away the inheritance from him, and give it to his own son; so a Community of it self, because of sin, is a naked society that can but destroy it self, and every one eat the flesh of his brother, therefore God hath appointed a King or governor, who shall take care of that community, rule them in peace, and save all from reciprocation of mutual acts of violence, yet so, as because a trust is put on the Ruler of a community, which is not his heritage, he cannot dispose of it as he pleaseth, because he is not the proper owner of the inheritance.