A92147:855
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.
But if he be a murderer of his father, who doth counsel his father to come to a place of danger, where he may be killed, and where the King ought not to be, as Abner was worthy of death, who watched not carefully King Saul, but slept when David came to his bed side, and had opportunity to kill the King, they are Traitors and murderers of the King, who either counselled his Majesty to come to Edge-hill, where the danger was so great, or did not violently restrain him from coming thither, seeing Kings safety and lives are as much, yea more in the disposing of the people then in their own private will, 2 Sam. 18. 2, 3. for certainly the people might have violently restrained King Saul from killing himself, and the King was guilty of his own death, and sinneth against his Office and subjects, who cometh out in person to any such battles where he may be killed, and the contrary party free of his blood. And here our Prelate is blind, if he see not the clear difference between the Kings Person, and the Office as he is King, and between his private Will, and his public and Royal Will. 3. The Angels may be named Thrones and Dominions in abstracto, and yet created, in concreto, and we may say the Angel and his power are both created at once; but David was not both borne the Son of Jesse, and a King at once: and the P. Prelate, by this may prove it is not lawful to resist the Devil (for he is of the number of these created Angels, Col. 1.) as he is a Devil, because in▪ resisting the Devil as a Devil, we must resist an Angel of God, and a Principality. 4. To speak ill of dignities, 2 Pet. 2. and Jud. 8. Piscator insinuateth is, to speak evil of the very Office of Rulers, as well as of their manners; and Theodat. saith, on 2 Pet. 2. that these Railers spake evil of the place of Governors and Masters, as unb• seeming believers. All our Interpreters, as Beza, Calvin, Luther, Bucer, Marloratus from the place saith, It is a special reproof of Anabaptists and Libertines, who in that time maintained, that we are all free men in Christ, and that there should not be Kings, Masters, nor any Magistrates; however the abstract is put for the concrete, ⟨p. 274⟩