A92147:852
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.
I answer these learned Authors, from which he stealeth all he hath, and yet he must persuade the King, he is the only man can defend his Majesties Cause, and the importunity, forsooth, of friends extorted this piece, as if it were a fault, that this Delphic Oracle (giving out railings, and lies for responses) should be silent. 2. Not ⟨p. 271⟩we only, but the Holy Ghost, in terminis, hath this distinction, Act. 4. 19. and 5. 29. We ought to obey God rather then men. Them Rulers (for of Rulers sitting in judgement is that speech uttered) commanding and tyrannizing over the Apostles, are men contradistinguished from God; and as they command and punish unjustly, they are but men, otherwise commanding for God, they are Gods, and more then men. 2. From Theophylact also, or from Chrysostom, on Rom. 13. we have this; The Apostle speaketh not (say they) [Greek or Hebrew]. 3. Sovereignty or Royalty, doth not properly reign or bear the sword, or receive praise, and this accident doth not bear a sword; nor do we think, or Paul speak, Rom. 13. of the abstracted Jew of power and Royalty, subsisting out of its subject; nor dream we, that the naked accident of Royal Authority, is to be feared and honoured as the Lords anointed; the person or man who is the King, and beareth the Crown on his head, and holdeth the sceptre in his hand, is to be obeyed; accidents are not persons, but they speak nonsense, and like brute beasts, who deny that all the kingly honour due to the King, must be due to him as a King, and because of the Royal dignity that God hath given to him, and not because he is a man; for a Pursuivants son is a man, and if a Pursuivants son would usurp the throne, and take the Crown on his head, and the sceptre in his hand, and command that all souls be subject to such a superior Power, because he is a man, the Laws of Scotland would hang a man for a less fault, we know: and the P. Prelate was wont to edify women, and converted souls to Christ, with such a distinction as objectum quod, and objectum quo, in the Pulpits of Edinburgh, and it hath good use here, we never took abstract Royalty to be the King. The Kings of Scotland of old were not second notions, and we exclude not the person of the King, yet we distinguish with leave of the P.