A92147:645
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.
The King as the King is an unerring and living Law, and by grant1 of Barclay, of old was one of excellent parts, and noble through virtue and goodness; and the goodness of a father as a father, of a tutor as a tutor, of a head as a head, of a husband as a husband do agree to the King as the King, so as King he is the Law it self, commanding, governing, saving. 2. His Will as King, or his Royal Will is reason, conscience, Law. 3. This Will is politicly present (when his person is absent) in all Parliaments, Courts, and inferior Judicatures. 4. The King as King cannot do wrong or violence to any. 5. Amongst the Romans the name King and Tyrant were common to one thing. 1. Because de facto, some of their Kings were Tyrants, in respect of their Dominion, rather then Kings. 2. Because he who was a Tyrant De facto, should have been, and was a King too de jure. 6. It is not lawful to either disobey or resist a King as a King, no more then it is lawful to disobey a good Law. 7. What violence, what unjustice, and excess of passion the King mixeth in, with his Acts of Government, are merely accidental to a King as King! for because men by their own innate goodness▪ will not, yea Morally cannot do that which is lawful, and just one to another, and do naturally, since the fall of man, ⟨p. 113⟩violence one to another; therefore, if there had not been sin, there should not have been need of a King, more then there should have been need of a Tutor to defend the child, whose father is not dead, or of a Physician to cure sickness where there is health; for remove sin, and there is neither death nor sickness, but because sin is entered into the world, God devised, as a remedy of violence2 and unjustice, a living, rational breathing Law called a King, a Judge, a Father: now the aberrations, violence, and oppression of this thing which is the living, rational, breathing Law is no Medium, no mean intended by God, and nature to remove violence. How shall violence remove violence? Therefore an unjust King, as unjust, is not that genuine ordinance of God, appointed to remove unjustice, but accidental to a King. So we may resist the unjustice of the King, and not resist the King. 8, If then any cast off the nature of a King, and become habitually a Tyrant, in so far he is not from God, nor any ordinance which God doth own: