A92147:454
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.
Ans. 1. It is false that the people doth, or can by the Law of nature resign their whole liberty in the hand of a King, 1. they cannot resign to others that which they have not in themselves, Nemo potest dare quod non habet, but the people hath not an absolute power in themselves to destroy themselves, or to exercise those tyrannous acts spoken of, 1 Sam. 8. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, &c. for neither God, nor Natures Law hath given any such power. 2. He who constituteth himself a slave is supposed to be compelled to that unnatural fact of alienation of that liberty, which he hath from his Maker, from the womb, by violence, constraint, or extreme necessity, and so is inferior to all free men, but the people doth not make themselves slaves when they constitute a King over themselves, because God giving to a people a King, the best and excellentest Governor on earth, giveth a blessing and special favour, Isaiah 1. 26. Hosea 1. v. 11. Isaiah 3. 6, 7. Ps. 79. 70, 71, 72. but to lay upon his people the state of slavery, in which they renounce their whole liberty, is a curse of God, Gen. 9. 25. Gen. 27. 29. Deut. 28. 32. 36. But the people having their liberty to make any ⟨p. 148⟩of ten or twenty, their King, and to advance one from a private state1 to an honourable throne, whereas it was in their liberty to advance another, and to give him Royal power of ten degrees, whereas they might give him power of twelve degrees, and of eight, or six, must be in excellency and worth above the man, whom they constitute King, and invest with such honour: as Honour in the fountain, and honos participans & originans, must be more excellent and pure then the derived honour in the King, which is honos particip•tus & originatus. 2. If the servant give his liberty to his master, ergo, he had that liberty in him; and in that act, liberty must be in a more excellent way in the servant, as in the Fountain, then it is in the master: and so this liberty must be purer in the people then in the King: and therefore in that, both the servant is above the master, and the People worthier then the King: and when the people give themselves conditionally and Covenant-wise to the King, as to a Public servant, and Patron, and Tutor, as the Governor of Britain, out of his humour, gave himself to King Edward; there is even here a note of superiority;