word of God (Deut. xvii. 15, 16; Rom. xiii. 1, 2) and the law of nature; and, therefore, they having made such a man their king, they have given him power to be their father, feeder, healer, and protector; and so must only have made him king conditionally, so he be a father, a feeder, and tutor. Now, if this deed of making a king must be exponed to be an investing with an absolute, and not a conditional power, this fact shall be contrary to Scripture and to the law of nature; for if they have given him royal power absolutely, and without any condition, they must have given to him power to be a father, protector, tutor, and to be a tyrant, a murderer, a bloody lion, to waste and destroy the people of God.

3. The law permitteth the bestower of a benefit to interpret his own mind in the bestowing of a benefit, even as a king and state must expone their own commission given to their ambassador, so must the estates expone whether they bestowed the crown upon the first king conditionally or absolutely.

4. If it stand, then must the people give to their first elected king a power to waste and destroy themselves, so as they may never control it, but only leave it to God and the king to reckon together, but so the condition is a chimera. "We give you a throne, upon condition you swear by Him who made heaven and earth, that you will govern us according to God's law; and you shall be answerable to God only, not to us, whether you keep the covenant you make with us, or violate it." But how a covenant can be made with the people, and the king obliged to God, not to the people, I conceive not. This presupposeth that the king, as king, cannot do any sín, or commit any act of tyranny against the people, but against God only; because if he be obliged to God only as a king, by virtue of his covenant, how can he fail against an obligation where there is no obligation? But, as a king, he oweth no obligation of duty to the people; and indeed so do our good men expound Psal. li., Against thee, thee only have I sinned," not against Uriah; for if he sinned not as king against Uriah, whose life he was obliged to preserve as a king, he was not obliged as a king by any royal duty to preserve his life. Where there is no sin, there is no obligation not to sin; and where there is no obligation not to sin, there is no sin. By this the king, as king, is loosed from all duties of the second table, being once made

a king, he is above all obligation to love his neighbour as himself; for he is above all his neighbours, and above all mankind, and only less than God.

Arg. 4.-If the people be so given to the king, that they are committed to him as a pledge, oppignerated in his hand as a pupil to a tutor, as a distressed man to a patron, as a flock to a shepherd; and so they remain the Lord's church, his people, his flock, his portion, his inheritance, his vineyard, his redeemed ones, then they cannot be given to the king as oxen and sheep, that are freely gifted to a man; or as a gift or sum of gold or silver that the man to whom they are given may use, so that he cannot commit a fault against the oxen, sheep, gold, or money that is given to him, however he shall dispose of them. But the people are given to the king to be tutored and protected of him, so as they remain the people of God, and in covenant with him; and if the people were the goods of fortune (as heathens say), he could no more sin against the people than a man can sin against his gold; now, though a man by adoring gold, or by lavish profusion and wasting of gold, may sin against God, yet not against gold; nor can he be in any covenant with gold, or under any obligation of either duty or sin to gold, or to lifeless and reasonless creatures properly, therefore he may sin in the use of them, and yet not sin against them, but against God. Hence, of necessity, the king must be under obligation to the Lord's people in another manner than that he should only answer to God for the loss of men, as if men were worldly goods under his hand, and as if being a king he were now by this royal authority privileged from the best half of the law of nature, to wit, from acts of mercy and truth, and covenant-keeping with his brethren.

Arg. 5.-If a king, because a king, were privileged from all covenant obligation to his subjects, then could no law of men lawfully reach him for any contract violated by him; then he could not be a debtor to his subjects if he borrowed money from them; and it were utterly unlawful either to crave him money, or to sue him at law for debts; yet our civil laws of Scotland tyeth the king to pay his debts, as any other man: yea, and king Solomon trafficing, and buying, and selling betwixt him and his own subjects, would seem unlawful; for how can a king buy and sell with his subjects, if he be under no covenant obligation to men, but to God

only. Yea, then, a king could not marry a wife, for he could not come under a covenant to keep his body to her only, nor if he committed adultery, could he sin against his wife, because being immediate unto God, and above all obligation to men, he could sin against no covenant made with men, but only against God.

Arg. 6.-If that was a lawful covenant made by Asa, and the states of Judah, 2 Chron. 15, 13, "That whosoever would not seek the Lord God of their fathers, should be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman," this obligeth the king, for ought I see, and the princes, and the people, but it was a lawful covenant; therefore the king is under a covenant to the princes and judges, as they are to him; it is replied by Barclaius: "If a master of a school should make a law, Whosoever shall go out at the school doors without liberty obtained of the master, shall be whipped, it will not oblige the schoolmaster that he shall be whipped if he go out at the school doors without liberty; so neither doth this law oblige the king, the supreme lawgiver."

Ans. 1.-Suppose that the scholars have no less hand and authority magisterial in making the law than the schoolmaster, as the princes of Judah had a collateral power with king Asa about that law, it would follow, that the schoolmaster is under the same law. 2. Suppose going out at school doors, were that way a moral neglect of studying in the master, as it is in the scholars, as the not seeking of God is as heinous a sin in king Asa, and no less deserving death, than it is in the people, then should the law oblige schoolmaster and scholar both without exception. 3. The schoolmaster is clearly above all laws of discipline which he imposeth on his scholars; but none can say that king Asa was clearly above that law of seeking of the Lord God of his fathers. Diodorus Siculus (1. 17), saith, the kings of Persia were under an oath, and that they might not change the laws; and so were the kings of Egypt and Ethiopia. The kings of Sparta, which Aristotle calleth just kings, renew their oath every month. Romulus so covenanted with the senate and people. Carolus V. Austriacus sweareth he shall not change the laws without the consent of the electors, nor make new laws, nor dispose or pledge any thing that belongeth to the empire. So read we Spec. Saxon, lib. 3, act. 54, and Xenophon (Cyroped. lib. 8,) saith there was a covenant

between Cyrus and the Persians. The nobles are crowned when they crown their king, and exact a special oath of the king. So doth England, Poland, Spain, Arragonia, &c. Alber. Gentilis,1 and Grotius,2 prove that kings are really bound to perform oaths and contracts to their people; but "notwithstanding there be such a covenant, it followeth not from this, (saith Arnisæus)3 that if the prince break his covenant and rule tyrannically, the people shall be free, and the contract or covenant nothing."-Ans. The covenant may be materially broken, while the king remaineth king, and the subjects remain subjects; but when it is both materially and formally declared by the states to be broken, the people must be free from their allegiance; but of this more hereafter.

Arg. 7.—If a master bind himself by an oath to his servant, he shall not receive such a benefit of such a point of service; if he violate the oath, his oath must give his servant law and right both to challenge his master, and to be free from that point of service; an army appointeth such a one their leader and captain, but they refuse to do it except he swear he shall not betray them to the enemy. If he doth betray them, then must the soldiers be loosed from that contract. If one be appointed pilate of a ship, and not but by an oath, if he sell the passengers to the Turks, they may challenge the pilate of his oath; and it is clear that (1.) the estates should refuse the crown to him who would refuse to govern them according to God's law, but should profess that he would make his own will a law, therefore the intention of the oath is clearly conditional. (2.) When the king sweareth the oath, he is but king in fieri, and so not as king above the states of kingdoms. Now his being king doth not put him in a case above all civil obligation of a king to his subjects, because the matter of the oath is, that he shall be under them so far in regard of the oath of God.

Arg. 8.-If the oath of God made to the people do not bind him to the people to govern according to law, and not according to his will and lust, it should be unlawful for any to swear such an oath, for if a power above law agree essentially to a king as a king, as royalists hold, he who sweareth such an oath

1 Alber. Gentilis in disput. Regal. lib. 2, c. 12, lib. 3, c. 14-16.

2 Hugo Grotius de jure belli et poc. lib. 2, c. 11-13.

3 Arnisæus de authoritate princip. c. 1, n. 7, 8, 10.

should both swear to be a king to such a people, and should swear to be no king, in repect by his oath he should renounce that which is essential to a king.

Arnisæus objecteth: Ex particularibus non potest colligi conclusio universalis, some few of the kings, as David and Joash, made a covenant with the people; it followeth not that this was an universal law.-Ans. Yea, the covenant is (Deut. 17.) and must be a rule to all; if so just a man as David was limited by a covenant, then all the rest also.

QUESTION XV.

WHETHER OR NO THE KING BE UNIVOCALLY, OR ONLY ANALOGICALLY, AND BY PROPORTION, A FATHER.

It is true Aristotle (Polit. 1. 3, c. 11) saith, that the kingly power is a fatherly power; and Justin, (Novell 12, c. 2,) Pater quamvis legum contemptor, quamvis impius sit, tamen pater est. But I do not believe that, as royalists say, the kingly power is essentially and univocally that same with a paternal or fatherly power; or that Adam, as a father, was as a father and king; and that suppose Adam should live in Noah's days, that by divine institution and without consent of the kingdoms and communities on earth, Adam hoc ipso, and for no other reason but because he was a father, should also be the universal king, and monarch of the whole world; or suppose Adam was living to this day, that all kings that hath been since, and now are, held their crowns of him, and had no more kingly power than inferior judges in Scotland have, under our sovereign king Charles, for so all that hath been, and now are, lawful 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 power from me, and be a king over me and my children.

1. But I assert, first, that though the Word warrant us to esteem kings fathers, Isa xlix. 23; Jud. v. 7; Gen. xx. 2, yet are not they essentially and formally fathers by generation; Num. xi. 12, "Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them?" and yet are they but fathers metaphorically-by office, because they should care for them as fathers do for children, and so come under

the name of fathers in the fifth commandment, and therefore rigorous and cruel rulers are leopards, and lions, and wolves, Ezek. xxii. 27; Zeph. iii. 3. If, then, tyrannous judges be not essentially and formally leopards and lions, but only metaphorically, neither can kings be formally fathers. 2. Not only kings but all judges are fathers, in defending their subjects from violence and the sword, and fighting the Lord's battles for them, and counselling them. If, therefore, royalists argue rightly, a king is essentially a father, and fatherly power and royal 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 arms against him to resist him, for that is unnatural and repugnant to the fifth commandment; so he who is once a king is evermore a king, and it is repugnant to the fifth commandment to resist him with arms. It is answered,—that the argument presupposeth that royal power and fatherly power is one and the same in nature, whereas they differ in nature, and are only one by analogy and proportion; for so pastors of the Word are called fathers, 1 Cor. iv. 15, it will not follow, that once a pastor, evermore a pastor; and that if therefore pastors turn wolves, and by heretical doctrine corrupt the flock, they cannot be cast out of the church. 3. A father, as a father, hath not power of life and death over his sons, because, Rom. xiii., by divine institution the sword is given by God to kings and judges; and if Adam had had any such power to kill his son Cain for the killing of his brother Abel, it had been given to him by God as a power politic, different from a fatherly power; for a fatherly power is such as formally

to

preserve the life of the children, and not to take away the life; yea, and Adam, though he had never sinned, nor any of his posterity, Adam should have been a perfect father, as he is now indued with all fatherly power that any father now hath; yea God should not have given the sword or power of punishing ill-doers, since that power should have been in vain, if there had been no violence, nor bloodshed, or sin on the earth; for the power of the sword and of lawful war, is given to men now in the state of sin. 4. Fatherly government and power is from the bosom and marrow of that fountain law of nature; but royal power is not from the law of nature, more than is aristocratical or democratical power. Dr. Ferne saith, (part 1, sec. 3, p. 8,) Monarchy is not jure divino, (I am not of

his mind,) nor yet from the law of nature, but ductu natura, by the guidance of nature. Sure it is from a supervenient commandment 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 entire relation from their father than from their prince. Subjects have not their being natural, but their civil, politic 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 natural head and root, without the free consent and suffrages of his children, and is essentially a father to one child, 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 politic head of a civil corporation. 7. A father, so long as his children liveth, can never leave off to be a father, though he were mad and furious 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 past; a father is a father for ever. But by confession of royalists, as Barclaius, Hugo Grotius, and Arnisæus, and others, grant, If a king sell his subjects by sea or land to other nations, -if he turn a furious Nero, he may be dethroned; and the power that created the king under such express conditions, as if the king violate them by his own consent he shall be put from the throne-may cease to hold him king; and if a stronger king conquer a king and his subjects, royalists say the conqueror is a lawful king; and so the conquered king must also lawfully come down from his throne, and turn a lawful captive sitting in the dust. 8. Learned politicians, as Bartholomeus Romulus, (Defens. part 1, n. 153,) and Joannes de Anania (in c. fin. de his qui fil. occid.) teach that "the father is not obliged to reveal the conspiracy of his son against his prince; nor is he more to accuse his son, than to accuse himself, because the father loveth the son better than him

self," (D. Listi quidem. Sect. Fin. quod. met. caus. et D. L. fin. c. de cura furiosi,) and certainly a father had rather die in his own person, as choose to die in his son's, 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 natural 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.

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The P. Prelate (c. 7, p. 87,) objecteth against us thus, stealing word by word from Arnisæus.1 1. When a king is elected sovereign to a multitude, he is surrogated in the place of a common father, Exod. XX. 12, Honour thy father." Then, as a natural father receiveth not paternal right, power, or authority, from his sons, but hath this from God and the ordinance of nature, nor can the king have his right from the community. 2. The maxim of the law is, Surrogatus gaudet privilegus ejus cui surrogatur, et qui succedit in locum, succedit in jus. The person surrogated hath all the privileges that he hath in whose place he succeedeth; he who succeedeth to the place succeedeth to the rights; the adopted son, or the bastard who is legitimated and cometh in the place of the lawful born son, cometh also in the privileges of the lawful born

son.

A prince elected cometh to the full possession of the majesty of a natural prince and father, for Modus acquirendi non tollit naturale jus possidendi (saith Arnisæus, more fully than the poor Plagiarius), the manner of acquiring any thing, taketh not away the natural possession, for however 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 community, yet the collation of the power is from God immediately, 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 Samuels or Elishas to anoint or declare kings, we are, in his ordinary providence, to conceive the designation of the person is the manifestation of God's will, called voluntas signi, as the schools speak, 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 privileges that he hath in whose place he is surrro

1 Arnisæus de potest princip. c. 3, n. 1, 2.

gated, that is true. He who is made assignee to an obligation for a sum of money, hath all the rights that the principal party to whom the bond or obligation was made. He who cometh in the place of a mayor of a city, of a captain in an army, of a pilot in a ship, or of a pope, hath all the privileges and rights that his predecessors had by law. Jus succedit juri, persona jure predita personæ jure predito. So the law, so far as my reading can reach,-who profess myself a divine;-but that he who succeedeth to the place of a father by nature, should enjoy all the natural rights and privileges of the person to whom he succeedeth, I believe the law never dreamed it; for then the adopted son, coming in place of the natural son, hath right to the natural affection of the father. If any should adopt Maxwell the prelate, should he love him as the pursuivant of Crail (Maxwell's father) loved him, I conceive not. Hath the adopted son his life, his being, the figure bodily, the manners of the son in whose place he is adop-. ted; or doth he naturally resemble the father as the natural son doth? The Prelate did not read this law in any approved jurist, though he did steal the argument from Arnisæus, and stole the citations of Homer and Aristotle out of him, with a little metathesis. A natural son is not made a son by the consent of parents, but he is a son by generation: so must the adopted son be adopted without the free consent and grace of the father adopting: so here the king cometh in the place of a natural father. But I conceive the law saith not that the elected king is a king without consent of the subjects, as a natural father is a father without the consent of his sons. Nor is it a law true, as

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once a father always a father," so once an elected king always a king, though he sell his subjects, being induced thereunto by wicked counsellors, If the king have no privileges but what the natural father hath, in whose place he cometh, then, as the natural father, in a free kingdom, hath not of life and death his over power neither sons, hath the king power of life and death over his subjects. This is no law. This maxim should prove good if the king were essentially a father by generation and natural propagation; but he is only a father metaphorically, and by a borrowed speech. A father non generando, sed politice alendo, tuendo, regendo, therefore an elected prince cometh not in the full possession of all the natural

power and rights of a natural father, 2. The P. Prelate speaketh disgracefully of the church of God, calling it a disorderly community, as if he himself were born of kings, whereas God calleth the king their shepherd, and the people, " God's flock, 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 heirs of God's wrath, except he be an Arminian still, as once he was. If we are in ordinary providence now, because we have not Samuels and prophets to anoint kings, to hold the designation of a person to be king to be the manifestation of God's will, called voluntas signi, is treason, for if Scotland and England should design Maxwell in the place of king Charles our native sovereign, (an odious comparison,) Maxwell should be lawful king; for what is done by God's will, called by our divines (they have it not from schoolmen, as the Prelate ignorantly saith) his signified will, which is our rule, is done lawfully. There can be no greater treason put in print than this,

QUESTION XVI.

WHETHER OR NO A DESPOTICAL AND MASTERLY DOMINION OF MEN AND THINGS AGREE TO THE KING BECAUSE HE IS KING,

I may here dispute whether the king be lord, having a masterly dominion both over men and things. But I first discuss shortly his dominion over his subjects,

It is agreed on by divines, that servitude is a penal fruit of sin, and against nature. Institutt. de jure personarum, Sect. 1, and F. de statu hominum. l. libertas; because all men are born by nature of equal condition.

Assert. 1,―The king hath no proper, masterly, or lordly dominion over his subjects; his dominion is rather fiduciary and ministerial, than masterly,

"He

1. Because royal empire is essentially to feed, rule, defend, and to govern in peace and godliness, (1 Tim, ii. 2,) as the father doth his children; Psal. lxxviii. 71, brought him to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance;" Isa. lv, 4, "I gave him for a leader and commander to the people;" 2 Sam. v. 2, " Thou shalt feed my people Israel;" 2 Sam. v. 2; 1 Chron. xi.