A92147:509
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.
ergo, he must come to some public place, and he must cause party and witnesses come before him, and he must consider, cognosce, examine in the place of judgement, things, persons, circumstances: and so God who commandeth positive acts of judging, commandeth the Judges locomotive power, and his natural actions of compelling by the sword the parties to come before him: even as Christ who commandeth his servants to preach, commandeth that the Preacher and the People go to Church, and that he stand or sit in a place where all may hear, and that he give himself to reading and meditating, before he come to preach. And if God command one Judge to come to the place of judgement, so doth he command seventy, and so all Estates to convene in the place of judgement. It is objected, That the Estates are not Judges ordinary and habitually, but only Judges at some certain occasions, when the King, for cogent and weighty causes, calleth them, and calleth them not to judge, but to give him advise and counsel how to judge. Ans. 1. They are no less Judges habitually then the King, when the common affairs of the whole Kingdom necessitateth these Public Watchmen to come together: for even the King ⟨p. 175⟩judgeth not actually, but upon occasion. 2. This is to beg the question, to say that the Estates are not Judges, but when the King calleth them, at such and such occasions: for the Elders, Princes and Heads of families and Tribes, were Judges ordinary, because they made the King. And 2. the Kingdom, by God, yea, and Church, Justice and Religion, so far as they concern the whole Kingdom, are committed not to the keeping of the King only, but to all the Judges, Elders, and Princes of the Land: And they are rebuked as evening wolves, lions, oppressors, Ezech. 22. 27. Zaca. 3. 3. Esa. 3. 14, 15. Mic. 3. 1, 2, 3. when they oppress the people in judgement, So are they, Deut. 1. 15, 16, 17. 2 Chron. 19. 6, 7. made Judges, and therefore they are no more to be restrained not to convene, by the Kings power, (which is in this, accumulative and auxiliary, not privative) then they can be restrained in judgement, and in pronouncing such