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.

QUEST. XV. Whether or no the King be Ʋnivocally, or only Analogically, and by proportion a father?

IT is true, Aristotle Polit. l. 3. c. 11. saith, That the Kingly power* 1.1 is a fatherly power; and Iustin. Novell 12. c. 2. Pater quamvis legum contemptor, quamvis impius sit, tamen pater est. But I doe not beleeve that, as Royalists say, that the Kingly power is essentially and univocally that same with a paternall or fatherly power; or that Adam as a father, was as a father and King, and that suppose A∣dam should live in Noahs daies, that by divine institution and with∣out consent of the Kingdomes and communities on earth, Adam hoc ipso, and for no other reason but because he was a father, should also be the universall King, and Monarch of the whole world; or sup∣pose Adam were living to this day; that all Kings that hath been since, and now are, held their Crownes of him, and had no more Kingly power then inferiour Iudges in Scotland have under our soveraigne King Charles, for so all that hath been, and now are lawfull Kings should be unjust usurpers; for if fatherly power be the first and native power of commanding, it is against nature that a Monarch who is not my father by generation, should take that po∣wer from me, and be a King over both me and my children.

But I assert, that though the Word warrant us to esteem Kings* 1.2 fathers, Esa. 49. 23. Jud. 5. 7. Gen. 20. v. 2. yet are not they essenti∣ally and formally fathers by generation, Num. c. 11. v. 12. Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them? and yet are they but fathers metaphorically; 1. By office, because they should care for them as fathers doe for children, and so come under the name of fa∣thers in the fifth Commandement; and therefore rigorous and cru∣ell Rulers are Leopards and Lyons, and Wolves, Ezech. 22. 27. Zeph. 3. 3. If then tyrannous Judges be not essentially and formally Leopards and Lyons, but only metaphorically, neither can Kings be formally fathers. 2. Not only Kings, but all Iudges are fathers in defending

their subjects from violence and the sword, and fighting the Lords battells for them, and counselling them. If therefore Royalists argue rightly, A King is essentially a father, and, fatherly power and royall power are of the same essence and nature; As therefore he who is once a father, is ever a father, and his children cannot take up armes against him to resist him, for that is unnaturall, & repugnant to the 5. Comman∣dement: So he who is once a King, is evermore a King, and it is repug∣nant to the fifth Commandement to resist him with armes. It is an∣swered, that the Argument presupposeth that Royall power, and Fatherly power is one and the same in nature, whereas they differ in nature, and are only one by analogie and proportion: for so Pa∣stors of the Word are called fathers, 1 Cor. 4. 15. it will not fol∣low, that once a Pastor, evermore a Pastor; and that if therefore Pastors turne wolves, and by hereticall doctrine corrupt the flock, they cannot be cast out of the Church. 3. A father, as a father, hath* 1.3 not power of life and death over his sonnes, because, Rom. 13. by divine institution the sword is given by God to Kings and Iudges: and if Adam had had any such power to kill his sonne Cain, for the killing of his brother Abel, it had been given to him by God as a power politike, different from a fatherly power: for a fatherly pow∣er, as such, is formally to conserve the life of the childaen, and not to take away the life: yea, and Adam, though he had never sinned, nor any of his posteritie, Adam should have been a perfect father, as he is now indued with all fatherly power that any father now hath; yea should not God have given the sword or power of punishing ill doers, since that power should have been in vaine, if there had been no violence, nor bloodshed, or sinne on the earth: for the power of the sword and of lawfull warre, is given to men now in the state of sinne. 4. Fatherly government and power is from the bosome and marrow of that fountaine law of nature; but Royall power is not from the law of nature, more then Aristocraticall or Democrati∣call power. D. Ferne saith, Monarchie is not jure divino, (I am not* 1.4 of his mind) nor yet from the law of Nature, but, ductu naturae, by the guidance of nature. Sure it is from a supervenient commande∣ment of God, added to the first law of nature, establishing Fatherly power. 5. Children having their life and first breathings of nature from their parents, must be in a more intire relation from their father, then from their Prince: Subjects have not their Being natu∣rall, but their civill, politique and peaceable well-being from their

Prince. 6. A father is a father by generation, and giving the being of nature to children, and is a naturall head and root, without the free consent and suffrages of his children, and is essentially a father to one childe, as Adam was to one Cain: but a Prince is a Prince by the free suffrages of a community, and cannot be a King to one only, and he is the politique head of a civill Corporation. 7. A father, so long as his children liveth can never leave off to be a father, though he were mad, and surious, though he be the most wicked man on earth. Qui genuit filium non potest non genuisse filium, what is once past cannot by any power be not passed, a father is a father for ever. But by confession of Royalists, as Barclay, Hug. Grotius, and Arni∣saeus and others grant, if a King sell his subjects by sea or land to other nations, if he turne a furious Nero, he may be dethroned, and the power that created the King under such expresse conditions, as if the King violate them by his owne consent, he shall be put from the Throne, may cease to be a King, and if a stronger King conquer a King and his subjects, Royalists ••ay the conquerour is a lawfull King; and so the conquered King must also lawfully come downe from his Throne, and turne a lawfull captive sitting in the dust. 8. Learned Polititians, as Bartholomeus Romulus, Defens. part. 1. num. 153. Ioannes de Anania in c. fin. de his qui fil. occid. teach that the father is not obliged to reveale the conspiracy of his son against his Prince, nor is he more to accuse his son, then to accuse himselfe; because the father loveth the sonne better then himselfe. D. Listi qui∣dem. Sect. Fin. quod. met. caus. & D. L. fin. c. de cura furiosi, and certainly a father had rather dye in his own person as choose to dye in his sonnes, in whom he affecteth a sort of immortality, In specie, quando non potest in individuo: but a King doth not love his subjects with a naturall or fatherly love thus; and if the affections differ, the power which secondeth the affection, for the conservation either of being, or well being, must also differ proportionally.

The P. Prelate objecteth against us thus, stealing word by word* 1.5 from Arnisaeus: When a King is elected Soveraigne to a multitude, he is surrogated in the place of a common father, Exod. 20. 5. Honour thy father; then as a naturall father receiveth not Paternall right, power, or authority from his sonnes, but hath this from God, and the ordinance of nature, nor can the King have his right from the commu∣nity. 2. The maxime of the Law is, Surrogatus gaudet privilegiis ejus cui surrogatur, & qui succedit ••n locum, succedit in jus. The

person surrogated, hath all the Priviledges that he hath, in whose place he succeedeth, he who succeedeth to the place, succeedeth to the right; the adopted sonne, or the bastard who is legittimated, and commeth in the place of the lawfull borne sonne, commeth also in the priviledges of the lawfull borne sonne; a Prince elected commeth to the full possession of the Majesty of a naturall Prince and Father, for Modu•• acquirendi non tollit naturale jus possidendi (saith Arnisaeus, more fully then the poore Plagiarius) the manner of acquiring any thing taketh not away the naturall possession, for how ever things be acquired, if the title be just, possession is the Law of Nations; then when the King is chosen in place of the father, as the father hath a divine right by nature, so must the King have that same: and seeing the right proprietor (saith the Pamphleting Prelate) had his right by God, by nature, how can it be, but howsoever the designation of the person is from the disordered com∣munity, yet the collation of the power is from God immediatly, and from his sacred and inviolable ordinance. And what can be said against the way by which any one elected obtained his right, for seeing God doth not now send Samuells or Elisha's to anoynt or declare Kings, we are in his ordinary providence to conceive the designation of the person is the manifestation of Gods Will, called Voluntas signi, as the Schooles speake, just so as when the Church designeth one to sacred orders.

Ans. 1. He that is surrogated in the place of another, due to him, by a positive Law of man, he hath Law to all the priviledges that he hath in whose place he is surrogated, that is true. He who is made Assignee to an Obligation for a summe of money, hath all the rights that the principall party to whom the Bond or Obligation was mad••, he who commeth in the place of a Major of a City, of a Captaine in an Army, of a Pilot in a ship, of a Pope, hath all the priviledges and Rights that his predecessors had by Law. Jus succedit juri, persona jure predita personae jure preditae. So the Law, so far as my reading can reach, who professe my selfe a Divine; but that he who succee∣deth to the place of a father, by nature, should injoy all the naturall Rights and Priviledges of the person to whom he succeedeth; I beleeve the Law never dreamed it, for then the adopted sonne comming in place of the naturall sonne, hath right to the naturall affection of the father; if any should adopt Maxwell the Prelate, should he love him as the Pursevant of Craile, Maxwell his father loved him? I conceive not; hath the adopted sonne his life, his being, the figure bodily, the manners of the sonne in whose place he is adop∣ted?

or doth he naturally resemble the father as the naturall sonne doth? The Prelate did not read this Law in any approved Iurist, though he did steale the argument from Arnisaeus, and stole the cita∣tions of Homer and Aristotle out of him, with a little Metathesis: A naturall sonne is not made a sonne by the consent of Parents, but he is a sonne by generation, so must the adopted sonne be adop∣ted* 1.6 without the free consent and grace of the father adopting: so here the King commeth in the place of a naturall father, but I con∣ceive the Law saith not that the elected King is a King without con∣sent of the subjects, as the naturall father is a father without con∣sent of his sonnes. 2. Nor is it a Law true, as once a father alwaies a father, so once an elected King, alwaies a King, though he sell his subjects, being induced thereunto by wicked Counsellors. 3. If the King have no priviledges, but what the naturall father hath in whose place he commeth, then as the naturall father in a free King∣dome hath not power of life and death over his sonnes, neither hath the King power of life and death over his subjects, this is no Law. 4. This maxime should prove good, if the King were essentially a father, by generation and naturall propagation, but he is onely a father Metaphorically, and by a borrowed speech. A father non gene∣rando, sed politicè alendo, tuendo, regendo, therefore an elected Prince commeth not in the full possession of all the naturall power and rights of a naturall father. 2. The P. Prelate speaketh disgracefully of the Church of God, calling it a disorderly community, as if he him∣selfe were borne of Kings, where as God calleth the King their Shepheard, and the people, Gods flocke, inheritance and people; and they are not a disorderly body by nature, but by sin; in which sense the Prelate may call King, Priest and people, a company of Heires of Gods wrath, except he be an Arminian still, as once he was. 3. If we are in ordinary providence now, because we have not Samuels, and Prophets to anoynt Kings, to hold the designation of a person to be King, to be the manifestation of Gods Will, called voluntas ••igni, is Treason, for if Scotland and England should designe Maxwell in the place of King Charles our native Sove∣raigne (an odious comparison) Maxwell should be lawfull King for what is done by Gods Will, called by our Divines (they have it not from Schoolemen, as the Prelate ignorantly saith) his signi∣fied will which is our rule, is done lawfully, there can be no greater treason put in print then this.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Ioan. Roffens. de potest. pap••. l. 2. c. 5. Adam suppose he had lived till now should not have bin King of the whole earth because •• father.
• * 1.2

  King a father Metaphorical∣ly only.
• * 1.3

  A fatherly power and a politike pow∣er are not one and the fame.
• * 1.4

  D. Ferne, par. 1. sect. 3. pag. 8.
• * 1.5

  Sacr. sanct. Reg. Maiest. c. 7. pag. 87. Arni∣saeus de potest. princip. c. 3. u. 1. 2.
• * 1.6

  See Aristotle saith the Pre∣late, Eth. 8. 10. pol. 1. c. Ho∣mer. Odys. 1. he might have said, see Arnisaeus loe. tit.