A92147:722
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.
Lex, Rex. › Question 26: QUEST. XXVI. Whether the King be above the Law or no?
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.
1. Assert. The Law hath a supremacy of constitution above the King;
1. Because the King by nature is not King, as is proved; Ergo, he must be King by a politic constitution and Law, and so the Law in that consideration is above the King, because it is from a civil Law, that there is a King, rather then any other kind of Governor.
1. Because the King by nature is not King, as is proved; Ergo, he must be King by a politique constitution and Law, and so the Law in that consideration is above the King, because it is from a civil Law, that there is a King, rather then any other kinde of Governour.
2. It is by Law, that amongst many hundred men, this man is King, not this man; and because, by the which a thing is constituted, by the same thing it is, or may be dissolved; therefore,
3. As a Community finding such and such qualifications as the Law requireth to be in a King, in this man, not in this man; therefore upon Law-ground,