A92147:586
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.
This power was never theirs, and never the peoples, and you cannot take the Princes power from him, which was never his power. 2. I am also sure, the Prince should never resume an unjust power, though he were cheated of it.
P. Prelate. It is a poor shift to acknowledge no more for the Royal Prerogative, then the Municipal Law hath determined, as some smatterers in the Law say. They cannot distinguish betwixt a Statute Declarative, and a Statute Constitutive: but the Statutes of a Kingdom do declare only, what is the Prerogative Royal, but do not constitute or make it, God Almighty ••th by himself constituted it: It is laughter to say, the Decalogue was not a Law, till God wrote it.
P. Prelate. It is a poor shift to acknowledge no more for the Royall Prerogative, then the Municipall Law hath determined, as some smatterers in the Law say. They cannot distinguish betwixt a Statute Declarative, and a Statute Constitutive: but the Statutes of a Kingdom do declare onely, what is the Prerogative Royall, but do not constitute or make it, God Almightie ••th by himself constituted it: It is laughter to say, the Decalogue was not a Law, till God wrote it.
Answ. Here a profound Lawyer calleth all smatters in the Law, who cannot say, that non ens, a Prerogative Royal, that is, a power contrary to God and mans Law, to kill and destroy the innocent, came not immediately down from Heaven: but I profess my self no Lawyer, but do maintain against the Prelate, that no Municipal Law can constitute a power to do ill; nor can any Law, either justly constitute, or declare such a fancy as a Prerogative Royal; so far is it from being like the Decalogue, that is, a Law before it be written, that this Prerogative is neither Law, before it be written, nor after Court Placebo's have written for it: for it must be eternal as the Decalogue, if it have any blood from so noble a house. 2. In what Scripture hath God Almighty spoken of a fancied Prerogative Royal?