A92147:545
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.
7. God in making a King to preserve his people, should give liberty1 without all politic restraint, for one man to destroy many; which is contrary to Gods end in the fifth Commandment, if one have absolute power to destroy souls and bodies of many thousands.
7. God in making a King to preserve his people, should give liberty1 without all politick restraint, for one man to destroy many; which is contrary to Gods end in the fift Commandement, if one have absolute power to destroy soules and bodies of many thousands.
- 1Arg. 7. Against an absolute Prince, contrary to the fifth Commandment.Arg. 7. Against an absolute Prince, contrary to the fift Commandement.
8. If the Kings of Israel and Judah were under censures and1 rebukes of the Prophets, and sinned against God and the people in rejecting these rebukes, and in persecuting the Prophets, and were under this Law not to take their neighbours wife, or his Vineyard from him against his will, and the inferior Judges were to accept the persons of none in Judgement, small or great; and if the King yet remain a brother, notwithstanding he be a King, then is his power not above any Law nor absolute: for what reason? 1. He should be under one Law of God to be executed by men, and not under another Law? Royalists are to show a difference from Gods Word. 2. His neighbours, brother, or subjects may by violence keep back their Vineyards, and chastity from the King: Naboth may by force keep his own Vineyard from Ahab; by the Laws of Scotland, if a subject obtain a Decree of the King of violent possession of the Heritages of a subject, he hath by Law, power to cast out, force, apprehend and deliver to prison these who are Tenants, brooking these Lands by the Kings personal Commandment.