A92147:930
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. David certainly intended to keep Keilah against King Saul, for the Lord would not have answered David in an unlawful fact, for that were all one, as if God should teach David how to play the Traitor to his King; for if God had answered, They will not deliver thee up, but they shall save thee from the hand of Saul, As David believed he might say this, as well as its contradicent, then David behoved to keep the city, for certainly Davids question pre-supposeth he was to keep the city.
2. David certainly intended to keep Keilah against King Saul, for the Lord would not have answered David in an unlawfull fact, for that were all one, as if God should teach David how to play the Traitor to his King; for if God had answered, They will not deliver thee up, but they shall save thee from the hand of Saul, As David beleeved he might say this, as well as its contradicent, then David behoved to keep the city, for certainly Davids question pre-supposeth he was to keep the city.
The example of Elisha the Prophet is considerable, 2 Kings1 6. 32. But Elisha sate in his house, and the Elders with him: And the King sent a man before him; but ere the messengers came to him, he said to the Elders, See now the son of a murderer, hath sent to take away mine head. Here is unjust violence offered by King Joram to an innocent man. Elisha keepeth the house violently against the Kings Messenger, as we did keep Castles against King Charles his unlawful messengers. Look (saith he) when the messenger cometh, shut the door. 2. There is violence also commanded, and resistance ⟨p. 345⟩to be made, Hold him fast at the door. In the Hebrew it is, [Greek or Hebrew] Arias Montan. Claudite •stium, & opprimetis eum in ostio: Violently press him at the door: And so the Chaldee Paraphrase, Jerome. Ne sinatis eum introire. The LXX. Interpreters, [Greek or Hebrew], illidite eum in ostio, Press him betwixt the door and the wall. It is a word of bodily violence, according to Vatablus. Yea Theodoret will have King Joram himself holden at the door. And 3. It is no Answer that D. Ferne and other Royalists give, that Elisha made no personal resistance to the King himself, but only to the Kings cut-throat, sent to take away his head. Yea they say, It is lawful to resist the Kings cut-throats. But the text is clear, that the violent resistance is made to the King himself also, for he addeth, Is not the sound of his Masters feet behind him? And by this answer, it is lawful to keep Townes with iron gates and bars, and violently to oppose the Kings cutthroats, coming to take away the heads of the Parliaments of both Kingdoms, and of Protestants in the three Kingdoms.