A92147:929
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.
Answ. There were not two Kings in Israel now, both David and Saul. 2. David acknowledgeth his subjection in naming Saul the Lords Anointed, & his Master, Lord & King; and therefore David was yet a subject. 3. If David would have proved his title to the Crown by extraordinary ways, he who killed Goliath extraordinarily, might have killed Saul by a miracle; but David goeth a most ordinary way to work, for self-defence, and his coming to the Kingdom was through persecution, want, eating shewbread in case of necessity, defending himself with Goliaths sword. 4. How was any thing extraordinary, and above a Law, seeing David might have killed his enemy Saul, and according to Gods Law he spared him? and he argueth from a moral duty, he is the Lords anointed, therefore I will not kill him? was this extraordinary above a law? then according to Gods law he might ⟨p. 344⟩have killed him. Royalists cannot say so, what ground to say one of Davids acts in his deportment toward Saul was extraordinary, and not all? was it extraordinary that David fl•d? no: or that David consulted the oracle of God, what to do when Saul was coming against him? 5. in an ordinary fact something may be extraordinary, as the dead sleep from the Lord upon Saul, and his men. 1. Sam. 26. and yet the fact according to its substance ordinary. 6. Nor is this extraordinary, that a distressed man, being an excellent warrior as David was, may use the help of six hundred men, who by the law of charity are to help to deliver the innocent from death; yea, all Israel were obliged to defend him, who killed Goliath. 7. Royalists make Davids act of not putting hands on the Lords anointed an ordinary moral reason against resistance, but his putting on of armour, they will have extraordinary, and this is (I confess) a short way to an adversary to cull out something that is for his cause, and make it ordinary, and something that is against his cause, must be extraordinary. 8. These men by the law of nature were obliged to join in arms with David, ergo the non-helping of an oppressed man, must be Gods ordinary law: a blasphemous tenet. 9. If David by an extraordinary spirit killed not King Saul, then the Jesuits way of killing must be Gods ordinary Law.
Answ. There were not two Kings in Israel now, both David and Saul. 2. David acknowledgeth his subjection in naming Saul the Lords Anointed, & his Master, Lord & King; and therefore David was yet a subject. 3. If David would have proved his title to the Crowne by extraordinary wayes, he who killed Goliah extraordinarily, might have killed Saul by a miracle; but David goeth a most ordinary way to work, for self-defence, and his comming to the Kingdom was through persecution, want, eating shewbread in case of necessity, defending himself with Goliahs sword. 4. How was any thing extraordinary, and above a Law, seeing David might have killed his enemie Saul, and according to Gods Law he spared him? and hee argueth from a morall duty, he is the Lords annoynted, therefore I will not kill him? was this extraoardinary above a law? then according to Gods law he might