A92147:458
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. I take the answer thus: Those who are mere means, and only means referred to the end, they are inferior to the end: but the King, as King, hath all his official and relative goodness in the world, 1as relative to the end. All that you can imagine to be in a King, as a King, is all relative to the safety and good of the people, Rom. 13. 4. He is a minister for thy good. He should not, as King, make himself, or his own gain and honour, his end. I grant, the King, as a man, shall dye as another man, and so he may secondarily intend his own good; and what excellency he hath as a man, is the excellency of one mortal man, and cannot make him amount in dignity, and in the absolute consideration of the excellency of a man, to be above many men and a whole Kingdom: for the moe good things there be, the better they are, so the good things be multiplicable, as a hundred men are better then one: Otherwise, if the good be such as cannot be multiplied, as one God, the multiplication maketh them2 worse, as many Gods are inferior to one God. Now if Royalists can show us any more in the King then these two, we shall be obliged to them; and in both, he is inferior to the whole.
Ans. I take the answer thus: Those who are meere meanes, and only meanes referred to the end, they are inferior to the end: but the King, as King, hath all his officiall and relative goodnesse in the world, 1as relative to the end. All that you can imagine to be in a King, as a King, is all relative to the safety and good of the people, Rom. 13. 4. He is a minister for thy good. He should not, as King, make himselfe, or his own gaine and honour, his end. I grant, the King, as a man, shall dye as another man, and so he may secondarily intend his own good; and what excellencie he hath as a man, is the excellencie of one mortall man, and cannot make him amount in dignitie, and in the absolute consideration of the excellencie of a man, to be above many men and a whole Kingdome: for the moe good things there be, the better they are, so the good things be multiplicable, as a hundred men are better then one: Otherwise, if the good be such as cannot be multiplied, as one God, the multiplication maketh them