A92147:496
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.
to judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with them. 17. Neither are they to respect persons in judgement, but are to hear the small as well as the great, nor to be afraid of the face of men, the judgement administered by all, is Gods. 2. Chro. 19. 6. All are obliged to fear God, Deut. 17. 19. 20. to keep the words of the Law, not to be lifted up in heart above their brethren, Isaiah 1. 17. Jer. 22. 2, 3. Let any man show me a difference according to Gods Word, but in the extension that what the King is to do as a King in all the Kingdom, and whole Dominions, (if God give to him many) as he gave to David and Solomon, and Joshua, that the inferior Judges are to do in such and such Circuits, and limited places, and I quit the cause, so as the inferior Judges are little Kings, and the King a great and dilated Judge, as a compressed hand or fist, and the hand stretched out in fingers and thumb, are one hand, so here. 4. God owneth inferior Judges as a congregation of Gods, Ps. 82. 1. 2. for that God sitteth in a congregation or Senate of Kings or Monarchs I shall not believe, till I see Royalists show to me a Commonwealth of Monarchs convening in one Judicature; all are equally called Gods, Joh. 10. 35. Exod. 22. 8. if for any cause, but because all Judges even inferior are the immediate Deputies of the King of ⟨p. 167⟩Kings, and their sentence in Judgement as the sentence of the Judge of all the earth, I shall be informed by the P. Prelate when he shall answer my reasons, if his interdicted Lordship may cast an eye to a1 poor Presbyter below, and as wisdom is that by which Kings reign, Prov. 8. 15. so also v. 16. by which Princes Rule, and Nobles, even all the Judges of the earth; all that is said against this is: That the King hath a Prerogative Royal, by which he is differenced from all Judges in Israel, called jus regis [Greek or Hebrew] for (saith Barclay) The King as King essentially hath a Domination and power above all, so as none can censure him, or punish him but God, because there be no thrones above his, but the throne of God. The Judges of Israel, as Samuel, Gideon, &c. had no domination, the dominion was in Gods hand. 2. We may resist an inferior Judge (saith Arnisaeus) otherwise there were no appeal from him, and the wrong we suffer were irreparable, as saith Marantius.