A92147:528
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.
Royalists plead for a power due to the King, as King, and that from God; such as Saul had, 1 Sam. 8. 9, 11. 1 Sam. 10. 25. But this power should be a power of grace and goodness in the King, as a good man; not in the King, as a King, and due to him by law: And so the King should have his Legal power from God, to be a Tyrant. But if he were not a Tyrant, but should lay limits on his own power, through the goodness of his own nature; No thanks to Royalists that he is not a Tyrant: For, actu primo, and as he is a King, (as they say) he is a Tyrant, having from God a Tyrannous power of ten degrees, as Saul had, 1 Sam. 8. and why not of fourteen degrees, as well as the Great Turk, or the King of Spain? if he use it not, it is his own personal goodness, not his official and Royal power. 4. The restraint of Providence laid by God upon any power to do ill, hindereth only the exercise of the power not to break forth in as Tyrannous acts as ever the King of Spain, or the great Turk can exercise toward any. Yea, Providence layeth Physical restraint, and possibly moral, sometimes, upon the exercise of that power that Devils, and the most wicked men of the world hath: but Royalists must show us that Providence hath laid bounds on the Kings power, and made it fatherly, and not masterly; so that if it the power exceed bounds of fatherly power, and pass over to the despotical and masterly power, it may be resisted by the Subjects. But that they will not say. 4. This paternal and fatherly power that God hath given to Kings, as Royalists teach, it trencheth not upon the liberty of the Subjects, and property of their goods; but in, and by lawful and just acts of Jurisdiction (saith the P. Prelate:) Well; Then it may trench upon the liberty of soul and body of the Subjects; but in, and by lawful and just acts of of jurisdiction: But none are to judge ⟨p. 183⟩of these acts of Jurisdiction, whether they be just or not just, but the King, the only Judge of supreme and absolute authority and power. And if the King command the idolatrous service in the obtruded Service-book, it is a lawful and a just act of jurisdiction: For to Royalists, who make the Kings power absolute, all acts are so just to the Subject, though he command Idolatry and Turkism, that we are to suffer only, and not to resist. 5. The Prelate presumeth that Fatherly power is absolute: