A92147:643
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.
Obj. But the people also do judge as corrupt men, and not as the people, and a Politic Body, providing for their own safety.
Obj. But the people also doe judge as corrupt men, and not as the people, and a Politique Body, providing for their owne safety.
Ans. I grant all, when God will bring a vengeance on Jerusalem, Prince and people both are hardened to their own destruction. Now God hath made all the three, in every Government where there is Democracy, there is some chosen ones resembling an Aristocracy, and some one for order presiding in Democratical courts, resembling a King. In Aristocracy as in Holland, there is somewhat of Democracy, the people have their Commissioners, and one Duke or General, as the• Prince of Orange is some umbrage of ⟨p. 112⟩Royalty, and in Monarchy there are the three Estates of Parliament, and these contain the three Estates, and so somewhat of the three forms of Government, and there is no one Government just that hath not some of all three; powre and absolute Monarchy is Tyranny, unmixed Democracy, is confusion, untempered Aristocracy is factious Dominion, and a limited Monarchy hath from Democracy respect to public good without confusion. From Aristocracy safety1 in multitude of Counsels without factious emulation, and so a bar laid on Tyranny, by the joint powers of many; and from Sovereignty union of many children in one father: and all the three thus contempered have their own sweet fruits through Gods blessing, and their own diseases by accident, and through mens corruption; and neither reason nor Scripture shall warrant any one in its rigid purity without mixture: And God having chosen the best government to bring men fallen in sin to happiness, must warrant in any one a mixture of all three, as in mixed bodies the four Elements are reduced to a fit temper resulting of all the four, where the acrimony of all the four first qualities is broken, and the good of all combined in one.