A92147:995
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.
Christ kissed the man that to his knowledge came to betray him, Christ fled not, but knowing where, and when his enemy should apprehend him, came willingly1 to the place. Ergo, we should not flee. 2. His actions are so mysterious that John P. P. in imitation of Christs forty days fast, will fast from flesh in lent, and the Prelate must walk on the sea, and work miracles, if all Christs actions be our instructions. 7. He might with more then twelve Legions of Angels defend himself, but he would not, not because resistance was unlawful, no shadow for that in the text, but because it was Gods will, that he should drink the cup his Father gave him, & because to take the sword without Gods warrant, subjecteth the usurper of Gods place to perish with the sword. Peter had Gods revealed will, that Christ behoved to suffer, Math. 26. 52, 53. Math. 16. 21, 22, 23. & Gods positive command that Christ should die for sinners, John 10. 24. may well restrain an act of lawful self-preservation, hic & nunc, and such an act as Christ lawfully used, at another time, Luk. 4. 29▪ 30. Joh. 11. 7, 8. we give no new creed, but this apostate hath forsaken his old creed, & the religion of the Church of Scotland, in which he was Baptised. 9. Nor do we expunge out of the Creed Christs descension into hell, & the communion of Saints, as the apostate saith, but the Popish local descension of Christ, & the Popish advancing of the Churches power above the Scriptures, & the intercession & prayers to the saints, or of the saints for us, we deny, & this Prelate, though he did swear the doctrine of the Church of Scotland, preached expressly all these & many other points of Popery in the Pulpits of Edinburgh. 10. We believe that ⟨p. 367⟩Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, but that Pilate had any legal power to condemn Christ, (but only a power by a permissive Decree,