A92147:568
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.
5. It is considerable here, that Sanches defineth the absolute1 power of Kings to be a plenitude and fullness of power, subject to no necessity, and bounded with rules of no public Law, and so did Baldus before him: but all Politicians condemn that of Caligula (as Suetonius saith) which he spake to Alexander the Great▪ Remember that thou mayest do all things, and that thou hast a power to do to all men, what thou pleasest: And Lawyers say, that this is Tyranny: Chilon one of the seven wise of Greece (as Rodigi) saith better, Princes are like gods, because they only can do that which is just. And this power being merely Tyrannical, can be no ground of a Royal Prerogative: There is another power (saith Sanches) absolute, by which a Prince dispenseth without a cause in a humane law; and this power, saith he, may be defended: but he saith, What the King doth by this absolute power, he doth it validè, validly, but not jure by Law; but by valid acts the Jesuit must mean Royal Acts, but no acts void of Law and Reason (say we) can be Royal Acts; for Royal Acts are acts performed by a King, as a King, and by a Law, and so cannot be Acts above, or beside a Law. It is true, a King may dispense with the breach of an humane Law, as a humane Law, that is, If the Law be death to any, who goeth up on the Walls of the City, the King may pardon any, who going up, discovereth the enemies approach, and saveth the City. But, 1. The inferior Judge according to the [Greek or Hebrew] that benign interpretation that the soul and intent of the Law requireth, may do this as well as the King. 2. All acts of independent Prerogative are above a Law, and acts of freewill having no cause or ground in the Law, otherwayes it is not founded upon absolute power, but on power ruled by Law and Reason: but to pardon a breach of the letter of the Law of man, by exponing it, according to the true intent of the Law and benignly, is an act of legal obligation, and so of the ordinary power of all Judges; and if either King or Judge kill a man for the violation of the Letter of the Law, when the intent of the Law contradicteth2 the rigid sentence, he is guilty of innocent blood. If that learned Ferdin. Vasquez be consulted, he is against this distinction of a ⟨p. 199⟩power ordinary and extraordinary in men;