A92147:650
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.
Object. 2. Doct. Ferne. A King may not, or cannot easily alter1 the frame of fundamental Laws, he may make some actual invasion, in some transient, and not fixed acts; and it is safer to bear these, then to raise a civill War of the Body, against the Head.
Object. 2. Doct. Ferne. A King may not, or cannot easily alter1 the frame of fundamentall Laws, he may make some actuall invasion, in some transient, and not fixed acts; and it is safer to bear these, then to raise a civill Warre of the Body, against the Head.
- 1Ferne, part. 3. sect. 5. pag. 39.
Answ. 1. If the King as King, may alter any one wholesome Law,1 by that same reason he may alter all. 2. You give short wings to an Arbitrary Prince, if he cannot over fly all Laws to the subversion of the Fundamentals of a State, if you make him as you do. 1. One who hath the sole Legislative power, who allanerly by himself, maketh Laws, and his Parliament and Council are only to give him advice, which by Law he may as easily reject, as they can speak words to him. He may in one transient act (and it is but one) cancel all Laws made against idolatry and Popery, and command, through bad Counsel, in all his Dominions; the Pope to be acknowledged as Christs Vicar, and all his doctrine to be established as the Catholic true Religion. It is but one transient act to seal a pardon to the shedding of the blood of two hundred thousand, killed by Papists. 2. You make him a King, who may not be resisted in any case; and though he subvert all Fundamental Laws, he is countable to God only, his people have no remedy, but prayers, or flight.
Answ. 1. If the King as King, may alter any one wholesome Law,