A92147:469
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.
A Community hath not power of life and death. A King hath power of life and death, (saith the Prelate) What then? ergo, a Community is not King. I grant all. But (poor man!) Ergo, the power of making a King, who hath power of life and death, is not in the people. It is like Prelates logic. Samuel is not a King; ergo, he cannot make David a King. It followeth not, by the Prelates ground. So the King is not an in inferior Judge: What? ergo, 1he cannot make an inferior Judge. 9. The power of life and death is eminently and virtually in the people, collectively taken▪ though not formally. And though no man can take away his own life, or hath power over his own life formally; yet a man, and a body of men hath power over their own lives, radically and virtually; in ⟨p. 157⟩respect they may render themselves to a Magistrate, and to Laws, which if they violate, they must be in hazard of their lives, and so they virtually have power of their own lives, by putting them under the power of good laws for the peace and safety of the whole. 10. This is a weak consequence: None hath power of his own life, Ergo, far less of his neighbours (saith the Prelate.) I shall deny the consequence. The King hath not power of his own life, that is, according to the Prelates mind, he can neither by the law of nature, nor by any Civill law. kill himself: Ergo, the King hath far less power to kill another. It followeth not: for the Judge hath more power over his neighbours life, then over his own. 11. But, saith the P. Prelate, The Community conceived without government, 2all as equal, endowed with natures and native liberty, hath no power of life and death, because all a•e borne free, and so none is borne with dominion and power over his neighbours life. Yea but so, Mr. P. Prelate, a King considered without government, and as born a free man, hath not power of any mans life, more then a Community hath: for King and Beggar are borne both alike free. But a Community in this consideration, as they come from the womb, have no Politic consideration at all. If you consider them as without all policy, you cannot consider them as invested with policy: yea if you consider them so as they are by nature, void of all policy, they cannot so much as add their after-consent and approbation to such a man to be their King, whom God immediately from heaven maketh a King: