A92147:828
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. Queritur, If in that case in which the King is captived, imprisoned, and not sui juris, and awed or over-awed by bloody Papists, and so is forced to command a barbarous and unjust War; and if being distracted Physically or Morally through wicked Counsel, he command that which no father in his sober wits would command, even against Law and Conscience, That the sons should yield obedience and subjection to him, in maintaining with lives and goods, a bloody Religion, and bloody Papists: If in that case, the King may not be resisted in his person, because the power lawful ⟨p. 260⟩and the sinful person cannot be separated? We hold the King using, contrary to the oath of God, and his Royal Office, violence in killing against Law and Conscience his Subjects, by bloody Emissaries, may be resisted by defensive Wars, at the commandment of the Estates of the Kingdom.
3. Queritur, If in that case in which the King is captived, imprisoned, and not sui juris, and awed or over-awed by bloody Papists, and so is forced to command a barbarous and unjust War; and if being distracted Physically or Morally through wicked Counsell, he command that which no father in his sober wits would command, even against Law and Conscience, That the sons should yeild obedience and subjection to him, in maintaining with lives and goods, a bloody Religion, and bloody Papists: If in that case, the King may not be resisted in his person, because the power lawfull ⟨p. 260⟩and the sinfull person cannot be separated? We hold the King using, contrary to the oath of God, and his Royall Office, violence in killing against Law and Conscience his Subjects, by bloody Emissaries, may be resisted by defensive Wars, at the commandment of the Estates of the Kingdom.
But before I produce Arguments, to prove the lawfulness of resistance,1 a little of the case of resistance. 1. Doct. Ferne, part. 3. sect. 5. pag. 39. granteth resistance by force to the King to be lawful. 1. When the assault is sudden. 2. Without colour of a Law, and Reason. 3. Inevitable. But if Nero burn Rome, he hath a colour of Law and Reason; yea, if all Rome, and his mother, in whose Womb he lay, were one neck. A man who will with reason go mad, hath colour of Reason, and so of Law, to invade and kill the innocent.