A92147:876
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.
and so by his1 example, all the Parliament, all the Innocents of the City of London, and Assembly of Divines, are obliged to lay down Arms, and to go to their own death to Prince Rupert, and the bloody Irish Rebels. 4. By this example it is unlawful to resist the cutthroats of a King, for Cesar in his own Royal person, the High Priest in person came not out against Christ. Yea it is not lawful for the Parliament to resist a Judas, who hath fled as a traitorous Apostate from the Truth and the Temple of Christ. 5. It is not lawful for innocents to defend themselves by any violence against the invasion of superiors in D. Ferns three cases, in which he alloweth resistance. 1. When the Invasion is sudden. 2. Unavoidable. 3. Without 2all colour of Law and Reason. In the two last cases, Royalists defend the lawfulness of self-defence. 6. If the example be pressed, Christ did not this and this, he resisted not with violence to save his ⟨p. 316⟩own life, therefore we are to abstain from resistance, and such and such means of self-preservation, then because Christ appealed not from inferior Judges to the Emperor Caesar; who, no doubt, would have shown him more favour, then the Scribes and Pharisees did, and because Christ conveyed not a humble supplication to his Sovereign and Father Caesar, then because he proffered not a humble petition to Prince Pilate for his life, he being an innocent man, and his cause just, because he neither conduced an Orator to plead his own just cause, nor did he so plead for himself, and give in word and writ, all lawful and possible defences for his own safety, but answered many things with silence, to the admiration of the Judge, Mark 15. 3, 4. 5. and was thrice pronounced by the Judge to be innocent, Luke 22. ver. 23. because, I say, Christ did not all these for his own life, therefore it is unlawful for Scotland and England to appeal to the King, to supplicate, to give in Appologi•s, &c. I think Royalists dare not say so. But if they say, he would not resist, and yet might have done all these lawfully, because these be lawful means, and resistance with the sword unlawful; because, He that taketh the sword, shall perish by the sword. Let me Answer then, 1.