A92147:906
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.
5. It were a mighty defect in providence to man, if dogs by nature may defend themselves against Wolves, Bulls against Lyons,1 Doves, against Hawks, if man in the absence of the lawful Magistrate, should not defend himself against unjust violence, but one man might raise armies of Papists sick for blood to destroy innocent men. They object, When the King is present in his person, and his invaders, he is not absent, and so though you may rather kill a private man, then suffer your self to be killed, yet, because prudence determineth the means of self-defence, you are to expose your life to hazard for justice of your King, and therefore not to do violence to the life of your King, nor can the body in any self-defence, fight against the head, that must be the destruction of the whole. Ans. Though the King be present as an unjust invader in Wars against his innocent subjects, he is absent as a King, and a father and defender, and present as an unjust grassator, and therefore the innocent may defend themselves, when the King neither can, nor will defend him. Nature maketh a man (saith the law. l. Gener. c. de decur. l. 10. l. sialius. §. Bellissimè ubique Gloss. in vers. ex magn. not. per. illum. text. ff. quod vi aut clam. l. ait praetor. §. si debitorem meum. ff. de hisque in fraud. credito.) even a private man his own judge, magistrate and defender, quando copiam judicis, qui sibijus reddat, non habet. When he hath no judge, to give him justice and law. 2. The subjects are to give their lives, for the King, ad the King, because the safety of the King as King is the safety of the common-wealth. But the King as offering unjust ⟨p. 335⟩violence to his innocent subjects is not King. Zoannet. part. 3. defens. n. 44. transgrediens notoriè officium suum judex, agit velut privatus aliquis, non ut magistratus. ff. de injur. est bonus in simile in. l. qui fundum. §. si. tutor. ff. pro emptore. 3. If the politic body fight against this head in particular, not as head, but as an oppressor of the people. There is no fear of dissolution, if the body rise against all magistracy, as magistracy and laws: dissolution of all must follow, Parliaments and inferior judges are heads. Num. 1. 16. Num. 10. 4.