A92147:896
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 because he knew flight was not safe every way, and nature taught him self-preservation, and reason and light of grace taught him the means, and the religious order of these means for self-preservation. Therefore he addeth a third, He took Goliaths sword, and gathered six hundred armed men, and after that made use of an host. Now a sword and armour are not horsing and shipping for flight, but contrary to flight; so re-offending, is Policies last refuge. A godly magistrate taketh not away ⟨p. 328⟩the life of a subject, if other means can compass the end of the Law;1 and so he is compelled and necessitated to take away the life: so the private man, in his natural self-defence, not to use re-action, or violent re-offending, in his self-defence against any man, far less against the servants of a King, but in the exigence of the last and most inexorable necessity. And it is true that M. Symmons faith,2 Sect. 11. pag. 35. Self-defence is not to be used, where it cannot be without sin. It is certain, Necessity is but a hungry plea for sin, Luke 14. 18. but it is also true, re-offending comparatively, that I3 kill rather then I be killed, in the sinless Court of Natures spotless and harmless necessity, is lawful and necessary, except I be guilty of self-murder, in the culpable omission of self-defence. Now a private man may fly, and that is his second necessity, and violent re-offending is the third mean of self-preservation. But with leave, violent re-offending is necessary to a private man, when his second mean, to wit, •light, is not possible, and cannot attain the end, as in the case of David: if •light do not prevail, Goliaths sword and an host of armed men are lawful: So to a Church and a community of Protestants, men, women, aged, sucking children, sick, and diseased, who are pressed either to be killed, or forsake Religion and Jesus Christ, •light is not the second mean, nor a mean at all, because 1. not possible, and therefore not a natural mean of preservation: For 1. the aged, the sick, the sucking infants, and sound