A92147:797
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.
QUEST. XXVII. Whether or no the King be the sole supreme and final interpreter of the Law?
QUEST. XXVII. Whether or no the King be the sole supreme and finall interpreter of the Law?
This Question conduceth not a little to the clearing of the doubts concerning the Kings absolute power, and the supposed sole nomothetic power in the King. And I think it not unlike to the question, whether the Pope and Romish Church have a sole and peremptory power of exponing Laws, and the Word of God? We are to consider that there is a twofold exposition of Laws, one speculative in a School way, so exquisite Jurists have a power to expone1 Laws. 2. Practical, in so far as the sense of the Law falleth under our Practice, and this is twofold; either private and common to all, or judicial and proper to Judges, and of this last is the question.
THis Question conduceth not a little to the clearing of the doubts concerning the Kings absolute power, and the supposed sole nomothetick power in the King. And I thinke it not unlike to the question, whether the Pope and Romish Church have a sole and peremptory power of exponing Lawes, and the Word of God? We are to consider that there is a twofold exposition of Lawes, one speculative in a Schoole way, so exquisite Iurists have a power to expone1 Lawes. 2. Practicall, in so farre as the sense of the Law falleth under our Practice, and this is twofold; either private and common to all, or judiciall and proper to Iudges, and of this last is the question.
- 1A twofold exposition of Laws.