A92147:801
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.
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.A twofold exposition of Lawes.
For this Public, the Law hath one fundamental rule, Salus populi, like the King of Planets the Sun, which lendeth Star-light to all Laws, and by which they are exponed; whatever interpretation swerveth either from fundamental Laws of policy, or from the Law of Nature, and the Law of Nations, and especially from the1