A92147:450
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.
2. Asser. The people in power are superior to the King, 1. because1 every efficient and constituent cause is more excellent then the effect. Every mean is inferior in power to the end, so Jun. Brutus, q. 31. Bucher l. 1. c. 16. Author. Lib. De offic. Magistr. q. 6. Henaenius disp. 2. n. 6. Joan. Roffensis Epist. De potest. pap. l. 2. c. 5. Spalato de Repu. Ecclesiast. l. 6. c. 2. n. 31. but the people is the efficient and constituent cause, the King is the effect, the people is the end; both intended of God to save the people, to be a healer and a Physician to them, Isaiah 3. v. 7. and the people appoint and create the King out of their indigence, to preserve themselves from mutual violence. Many things are objected against this, 1. That the efficient and constituent cause is God, and the people is only the instrumental cause; and Spalato saith, that the people doth indirectly only give Kingly power, because God, at their act of election, ordinarily giveth it. Ans. The Scripture saith plainly, as we heard before, the people made Kings, and if they do, as other second causes produce their effects, it is all one that God as the principal cause maketh Kings, else we should not argue from the cause to the effect amongst the creatures. 2. God by that same action that the people createth2 a King, doth also, by them, as by his instruments create a King, and that God doth not immediately, at the naked presence of the act of popular election, confer Royal dignity on the man, without any action of the people, as they say by the Churches act of conferring Orders, God doth immediately without any act of the Church, infuse ⟨p. 145⟩from Heaven supernatural abilities on the man, without any active influence of the Church, is evident by this, 1. The Royal3 power to make Laws with the King, and so a power eminent in their states representative to govern themselves, is in the people, for if the most high acts of Royalty be in them, why not the power also? and so what need to fetch a Royal power from Heaven, to be immediately infused in him, seeing the people hath such a power in themselves at hand? 2. The people can, and doth limit, and bind4