A92147:814
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.
5. It must follow, that there can be no necessity of written laws1 to the Subjects; against Scripture, and natural reason, and the law of Nations, in which all accord, That Laws not promulgated and published, cannot oblige as Laws: Yea, Adam, in his innocency, was not obliged to obey a Law not written in his heart by Nature, except God had made known the Law; as is clear, Gen. 3. 11. Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? But if the Kings absolute Will may put on the Law what sense he pleaseth, out of his independent and irresistible Supremacy; The Laws promulgated and written to the Subjects, can declare nothing, what is to be done by the Subjects, as just, and what is to be avoided as unjust: because the Laws must signify to the Subjects, what is just, and unjust, according to their genuine sense. Now, their genuine sense, according to Royalists, is not only uncertain and impossible to be known, but also contradictorious: for the King obligeth us without gainsaying, to believe that the just Law hath ⟨p. 256⟩this unjust sense. Hence this of flattering Royalists, crueller to Kings, than Ravens, (for these eat but dead men, and they devour living men) when there is a controversy between the King and the Estates of Parliament, who shall expone the Law, and render its native meaning? (say Royalists) not the Estates of Parliament, for they are Subjects, not Judges to the King, and only Counsellors and advisers of the King. The King therefore must be the only judicial and final expositor. As for Lawyers (said Strafford) the Law is not enclosed in a Lawyers Cap. But I remember this was one of the Articles laid to the charge of Richard the Second, that he said, The Law was in his 2head and breast. And indeed it must follow, if the King, by the plenitude of absolute power, be the only supreme, uncontrollable Expositor of the Law, that is not Law which is written in the Acts of Parliament, but that is the Law which is in the Kings breast and head: which Josephus, lib. 19. Antiq. c. 2. objected to Caius. And all justice, and injustice should be finally and peremptorily resolved on the Kings will and absolute pleasure.