A92147:875
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.
2. Assertion. Neither suffering formally as suffering, and so neither can non-resisting passive fall under any moral law of God, except1 in two conditions: 1. In the point of Christs passive obedience, he being the eternal God, as well as Man, and so Lord of his own blood and life, by virtue of a special commandment imposed on him by his Father, was commanded to lay down his life, yea and to be an Agent as well as a Patient in dying. Joh. 10. 18. Yea and actively he was to contribute something for his own death, ⟨p. 315⟩and offer himself willingly to death, Mat. 28. 20. And knowing the hour that he was to depart out of this world unto the Father, John 213. 1. would not only not flee, which is to Royalists lawful, to us a special point of resistance, Joh. 14. 31. Joh. 18. 4, 5, 6, 7. and but upbraided Peter, as the Agent of Satan, who would dissuade him to die, Mat. 16. 22, 23. and would fight for him. And he doth not fetch any argument against Peters drawing of his sword, from the unlawfulness of self-defence, and innocent resistance, (which he should have done, if Royalists plead with any colour of reason from his example, against the lawfulness of Resistance and self-defence) but from the absolute power of God. 2. From Gods positive will, who commanded him to die, Mat. 26. 53, 54. if therefore Royalists prove any thing against the lawfulness of resisting Kings, when they offer (most unjustly) violence to the life of Gods servants, from this one merely extraordinary and rare example of Christ, the like whereof was never in the world, they may from the same example prove it unlawful to flee; for Christ would not flee,