A92147:824
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.
3. The question is not so much concerning the authoritative Act ⟨p. 258⟩of War, as concerning the power of natural Defence, upon supposition, That the King be not now turned an habitual Tyrant, but that upon some acts of mis-information, he come in arms against his Subjects.
3. The question is not so much concerning the authoritative Act ⟨p. 258⟩of War, as concerning the power of naturall Defence, upon supposition, That the King be not now turned an habituall Tyrant, but that upon some acts of mis-information, he come in arms against his Subjects.
2. Arnisaeus maketh two sort of Kings, Some Kings integrae 1Majestatis, of entire power and Sovereignty; some Kings by pactions or voluntary agreement, between King and people. But I judge this a vain distinction: For the limited Prince, so he be limited to a power only of doing just and right; by this is not a Prince integrae Majestatis of entire Royal Majesty, whereby he may do both good, and also play the Tyrant; but a power to do ill, being no ways essential, yea, repugnant to the absolute Majesty of the King of Kings, cannot be an essential part of the Majesty of a lawful King; and therefore the Prince limited by voluntary and positive paction only, to rule according to law and equity, is the good, lawful, and entire Prince, if he have not power to do every thing just and good in that regard, only he is not an entire and complete Prince. So the man will have it lawful to resist the limited Prince, not the absolute Prince; by the contrary, it is more lawful to me to resist the absolute Prince, then the limited, in as much, as we may with safer consciences resist the Tyrant, and the Lyon, then the just Prince and the Lamb. Nor can I assent to Cunnerus de officio princip. Christia. c. 5. & 17. Who holdeth, that these voluntary pactions betwixt King and people, in which the power of the Prince is diminished, cannot stand, because their power is given to them by Gods Word, which cannot be taken from them, by any voluntary paction, lawfully; and from the same ground, Winzetus in velit. contr. Buchan. p. 32. will have it unlawful to resist Kings, because God hath made them unresistable. I answer, If God by a divine institution