A92147:529
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.
But so if a father murder his child, he is not comptable to the Magistrate therefore; but being absolute over his children, only the Judge of the World, not any power on earth can punish him. 6. We have proved that the Kings power is paternal or fatherly only, by analogy, and improperly. 7. What is this Prerogative Royal, we shall hear by and by, 8. There is no restraint on Earth, laid upon this fatherly power of the King, but Gods law, which is a moral restraint. If then the King challenge as great a power as the Turk hath, he only sinneth against God; but no mortal man on earth may control him, as Royalists teach: and who can know what power it is that Royalists plead for, whether a despotical power of Lordly power, or a fatherly power? If it be a power above law, such as none on earth may resist it; it is no matter whether it be above law of two degrees, or of twenty, even to the Great Turks power.
But so if a father murther his childe, he is not comptable to the Magistrate therefore; but being absolute over his children, only the Judge of the World, not any power on earth can punish him. 6. We have proved that the Kings power is paternall or fatherly only, by analogie, and improperly. 7. What is this Prerogative Royall, we shall heare by and by, 8. There is no restraint on Earth, laid upon this fatherly power of the King, but Gods law, which is a morall restraint. If then the King challenge as great a power as the Turke hath, he only sinneth against God; but no mortall man on earth may controll him, as Royalists teach: and who can know what power it is that Royalists plead for, whether a dispoticall power of Lordly power, or a fatherly power? If it be a power above law, such as none on earth may resist it; it is no matter whether it be above law of two degrees, or of twenty, even to the Great Turkes power.
These go for Oracles, at Court▪ Tacitus. Principi summum rerum arbitrium Dii dederunt, subditis obsequy gloria relicta est. Seneca. Indigna digna habenda sunt, Rex quae facit. Salustius. Impun• quidvis facere, id est, Regem esse. As if to be a King, and to be a God, who cannot err, were all one. But certainly, these Authors are taxing the Licence of Kings, and not commanding their power.