OR

THE LAW AND THE
THE PRINCE;

A DISPUTE FOR

THE JUST PREROGATIVE OF KING AND PEOPLE:

CONTAINING

THE REASONS AND CAUSES OF THE MOST NECESSARY DEFENSIVE WARS OF THE KINGDOM OF SCOTLAND,

AND OF THEIR

EXPEDITION FOR THE AID AND HELP OF THEIR DEAR BRETHREN
OF ENGLAND;

IN WHICH THEIR INNOCENCY IS ASSERTED, AND A FULL ANSWER IS GIVEN TO A SEDITIOUS PAMPHLET,

66

ENTITULED,

SACRO-SANCTA REGUM MAJESTAS,"

OR

THE SACRED AND ROYAL PREROGATIVE OF CHRISTIAN KINGS;

UNDER THE NAME OF J. A., BUT PENNED BY

JOHN MAXWELL, THE EXCOMMUNICATE POPISH PRELATE;

WITH A SCRIPTURAL CONFUTATION OF THE RUINOUS GROUNDS OF W. BARCLAY, H. GROTIUS, H. ARNISEUS,
ANT. DE DOMI. POPISH BISHOP OF SPALATO, AND OF OTHER LATE ANTI-MAGISTRATICAL
ROYALISTS, AS THE AUTHOR OF OSSORIANUM, DR FERNE, E. SYMMONS,
THE DOCTORS OF ABERDEEN, ETC.

IN FORTY-FOUR QUESTIONS.

BY THE

REV. SAMUEL RUTHERFORD.

SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS.

"But if you shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king."-1 SAM. xii. 25.

EDINBURGH:

ROBERT OGLE AND OLIVER & BOYD.

M. OGLE & SON AND WILLIAM COLLINS, GLASGOW. D. DEWAR, PERTH. A. BROWN & CO., ABERDEEN. W. M'COMB, BELFAST. HAMILTON, ADAMS & CO., AND JAMES NISBET & CO., LONDON.

MDCCCXLIII.

[London: Printed for John Field, and are to be sold at his house upon Addle-hill, near Baynards-Castle. Octob. 7, 1644.]

EDINBURGH:

REPRINTED BY A. MURRAY, MILNE SQUARE.

PREFACE.

In issuing a new edition of Lex, Rex, it has been considered advisable to print along with it Buchanan's De Jure Regni apud Scotos. This work, on its first appearance, gave great offence to the government of the time, as containing principles which were opposed to the established monarchy; and was consequently condemned by the parliament of 1684. In 1664 there was a proclamation issued against any translation of it being in the

possession of any person. "This proclamation," says Wodrow, " is every way singular; for any thing that appears, this translation of that known piece of the celebrated Buchanan was not printed, but only, it seems, handed about in manuscript; while, in the meantime, thousands of copies of it in the Latin original were in everybody's hands. It had been more just to have ordered an answer to have been formed to the solid arguments in that dialogue against tyranny and arbitrary government." Again, in 1688, another proclamation was published by the Council, prohibiting every person from selling, dispersing, or`lending such books as Buchanan's " De Jure Regni apud Scotos," "Lex, Rex," "Jus Populi Naphtali," along with some others which were considered as having a treasonable tendency. The same principles are advocated in Lex, Rex, that are held by Buchanan: both works are equally opposed to that absolute and passive obedience. required from the subject to a royal prerogative. A modern writer* well remarks, "That resistance to lawful authority-even when that authority so called has, in point of fact, set at nought all law-is in no instance to be vindicated, will be held by those only who are the devotees of arbitrary power and passive obedience. The principles of Mr Rutherford's Lex, Rex, however obnoxious they may be to such men, are substantially the principles on which all government is founded, and without which the civil magistrate would become a curse rather than a blessing to a country. They are the very principles which lie at the basis of the British constitution, and by whose tenure the house of Brunswick does at this very moment hold possession of the throne of these realms."

*Rev. Robert Burns, D.D., in his Preliminary Dissertation to Wodrow's Church History.