A92147:564
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.
If he may not by the same reason, over-leap Law and Reason by the elevation of twenty degrees; And if you make the King a Julian (God avert, and give the spirit of revelation to our King) may he not command all the Alcoran, and the Religion of the Heathen and Indians? Royalists say, The Prerogative of Royalty excludeth not reason, and maketh not the King to •• as a brute beast without all reason; but it giveth a power to a King to do by his Royal pleasure, not fettered to the dictates of a ⟨p. 197⟩Law; for in things which the King doth by his Prerogative Royal, he is to follow the advice and counsel of his wise council, though their counsel and advice doth not bind the Royal will of the King. I answer, it is to me, and I am sure to many Learneder, a great question; If the will of any reasonable creature, even of the damned angels, can will, or chose any thing which their reason corrupted, as it is, doth not 1dictate, hic & nunc to be good. For the object of the will of all men is good, either truly, or apparently good to the doer; for the devil could not suite in marriage souls, except he war in the cloths of an Angel of light; sin as sin cannot sell, or obtrude it self upon any, but under the notion of good. I think it seemeth good to the great Turk▪ to command innocent men, to cast themselves over a precipice two hundred fathom high in the Sea, and drown themselves to pleasure him: So the Turks reason (for he is rational, if he be a man) dictateth to his vast pleasure, that that is good which he commandeth.
If he may not by the same reason, over-leap Law and Reason by the elevation of twenty degrees; And if you make the King a Iulian (God avert, and give the spirit of revelation to our King) may he not command all the Alcaron, and the Religion of the Heathen and Indians? Royalists say, The Prerogative of Royalty excludeth not reason, and maketh not the King to •• as a brute beast without all reason; but it giveth a power to a King to do by his Royall pleasure, not fettered to the dictates of a ⟨p. 197⟩Law; for in things which the King doth by his Prerogative Royall, he is to follow the advice and counsell of his wise counsell, though their counsell and advice doth not binde the Royall will of the King. I answer, it is to me, and I am sure to many Learneder, a great question; If the will of any reasonable creature, even of the damned angels, can will, or chose any thing which their reason corrupted, as it is, doth not