Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661)
Lex Rex
A One of the greatest works on
Government, the Civil Magistrate, Church and State ever written. This is
an excerpt from the book, and if you click on the title (Lex Rex) at the
top of the article, then you will be transported offsite to a complete
book online of the work.
Lex,
Rex
by Rev. Samuel Rutherford
For the lawfulness of resistance in
the matter of the king's unjust invasion of life and religion, we offer
these arguments.
Arg. 1: That power which is
obliged to command and rule justly and religiously for the good of the
subjects, and is only set over the people on these conditions, and not
absolutely, cannot tie the people to subjection without resistance, when
the power is abused to the destruction of laws, religion, and the
subjects. But all power of the law is thus obliged, (Rom. xiii. 4 ;
Deut. xvii. 18-20 ; 2 Chron. xix. 6 ; Ps. cxxxii. 11, 12 ; lxxxix. 30,
31; 2 Sam. vii. 12 ; Jer. xvii. 24, 25,) and hath, and may be, abused by
kings, to the destruction of laws, religion, and subjects. The
proposition is clear. 1. For the powers that tie us to subjection only
are of God. 2. Because to resist them, is to resist the ordinance of
God. 3. Because they are not a terror to good works, but to evil. 4.
Because they are God's ministers for our good, but abused powers are not
of God, but of men, or not ordinances of God ; they are a terror to good
works, not to evil ; they are not God's ministers for our good.
Arg. 2: That power which is
contrary to law, and is evil and tyrannical, can tie none to subjection,
but is a mere tyrannical power and unlawful; and if it tie not to
subjection, it may lawfully be resisted. But the power of the king,
abused to the destruction of laws, religion, and subjects, is a power
contrary to law, evil, and tyrannical, and tyeth no man to subjection :
wickedness by no imaginable reason can oblige any man. Obligation to
suffer of wicked men falleth under no commandment of God, except in our
Saviour. A passion, as such, is not formally commanded, I mean a
physical passion, such as to be killed. God hath not said to me in any
moral law, Be thou killed, tortured, beheaded ; but only, Be thou
patient, if God deliver thee to wicked men's hands, to suffer these
things.
Arg. 3: There is not a stricter
obligation moral betwixt king and people than betwixt parents and
children, master and servant, patron and clients, husband and wife, the
lord and the vassal, between the pilot of a ship and the passengers, the
physician and the sick, the doctor and the scholars, but the law
granteth, (l. Minime 35, de Relig. et sumpt. funer,) if these betray
their trust commited to them, they may be resisted: if the father turn
distracted, and arise to kill his sons may violently apprehend him, and
bind his hands, and spoil him of his weapons; for in that he is not a
father......The servant may resist the master if he attempts unjustly
kill him, so may the wife do to the husband; if the pilot should
wilfully run the ship on a rock to destroy himself and his passengers,
they might violently thrust him from the helm. Every tyrant is a furious
man, and is morally distracted, as Althusius said, Polit. c. 28, n. 30,
and seq.
Arg. 4: That which is given as a
blessing, and a favour, and a screen, between the people's liberty and
their bondage, cannot be a given of God as a bondage and slavery to the
people. But the power of king is given as a blessing and favour God to
defend the poor and needy, to preserve both tables of the law, and to
keep the people in their liberties from oppressing and treading one upon
another. But so it is, that if such a power be given of God to a king,
by which, actu primo, he is invested of God to do acts of
tyranny, and so to do them, that to resist him in the most innocent way,
which is self-defence, must be a resisting of God, and rebellion against
the king, his deputy ; then hath God given a royal power as
uncontrollable by mortal men, by any violence, as if God himself were
immediately and personally resisted, when the king is resisted, and so
this power shall be a power to waste and deatroy irresistibly, and so in
itself a plague and a curse; for it cannot be ordained both according to
the intention and genuine formal effect and intrinsical operation of the
power, to preserve the tables of the law, religion and liberty, subjects
and laws, and also to destroy the same. But it is taught by royalists
that this power is for tyranny, as well as for peaceable government;
because to resist this royal power put forth in acts either ways, either
in acts of tyranny or just government, is to resist the ordinance of
God, as royalists say, from Rom. xiii. 1-3. And we know, to resist God's
ordinances and God's deputy, formaliter, as his deputy, is to resist God
himself,(1 Sam. viii. 7; Matt.x. 40,) as if God were doing personally
these acts that the king is doing; and it importeth as much as the King
of kings doth these acts in and through the tyrant. Now, it is blasphemy
to think or say, that when a king is drinking the blood of innocents,
and wasting the church of God, that God, if he were personally present,
would commit these same acts of tyranny, (God avert such blasphemy !)
and that God in and through the king, as his lawful deputy and
vicegerent in these acts of tyranny, is wasting the poor church of God.
If it be said, in these sinful acts of tyranny, he is not God's formal
vicegerent, but only in good and lawful acts of government, yet he is
not to be resisted in these acts, not because the acts are just and
good, but because of the dignity of his royal person. Yet this must
prove that those who resiet the king in these acts of tyranny, must
resist no ordinance of God, but only resist him who is the Lord's
deputy, though not as the Lord's deputy. What absurdity is there in that
more than to disobey him, refusing active obedience to him who is tha
Lord's deputy, not as the, Lord's deputy, but as a man commanding
besides his master's warrant?
Arg. 5: That which is inconsistent
with the care and providence of God in giving a king to his church is
not to be taught. Now God's end in giving a king to his church, as the
feeding, safety, preservation, and the peaceable and quiet life of his
church. (1 Tim. ii. 2 ; Isa. xlix. 23 ; Psal. lxxix. 71). But God should
cross his own end in the same act of giving a king, if he should provide
a king, who, by office, were to suppress robbers, murderers, and all
oppressors and wasters in his holy mount, and yet should give an
irresistible power to one crowned lion, a king, who may kill ten hundred
thousand protestants for their religion, in an ordinary providence; and
they are by an ordinary law of God to give their throats to his
emissaries and bloody executioners. If any say the king will not be so
cruel, - I believe it; because, actu secundo, it is not possibly
in his power to be so cruel. We owe thanks to his good will that he
killeth not so many, but no thanks to the nature and genuine intrinsical
end of a king, who hath power from God to kill all these, and that
without resistance made by any mortal man. Yea, no thanks (God avert
blasphemy!) to God's ordinary providence, which (if royalists may be
believed) putteth no bar upon the unlimited power of a man inclined to
sin, and abuse his power to so much cruelty. Some may say, the same
absurdity doth follow if the king should turn papist, and the parliament
all were papists. In that case there might be so many martyrs for the
truth put to death, and God should put no bar of providence upon this
power, then more than now; and yet, in that case, the king and
parliament should be judges given of God, actu primo, and by virtue of
their office obliged to preserve the people in peace and godliness. But
I answer, If God gave a lawful official power to king and parliament to
work the same cruelty upon millions of martyrs, and it should be
unlawful for them by arms to defend themselves, I should then think that
king and parliament were both ex officio, by virtue of their office, and
actu primo, judges and fathers, and also by that same office, murderers
and butchers,- which were a grievous aspersion to the unspotted
providence of God.
Arg.
6:
If the estates of a kingdom give the power to a king, it is their own
power in the fountain ; and if they give it for their own good, they
have power to judge when it is used against themselves, and for their
evil, and so power to limit and resist the power that they gave. Now,
that they may take away this power, is clear in Athaliah's case. It is
true she was a tyrant without a title, and had not the right of heaven
to the crown, yet she had, in men's court, a title. For supposing all
the royal seed to be killed, and the people consent, we cannot say that,
for these six years or thereabout, she was no magistrate: that there
were none on the throne of David at this time: that she was not to be
obeyed as God's deputy. But grant that she was no magistrate; yet when
Jehoash is brought forth to be crowned, it was a controversy to the
states to whom the crown should belong. 1. Athaliah was in possession.
2. Jehoash himself being but seven years old, could not be judge. 3. It
might be doubted if Joash was the true son of Ahaziah, and if he was not
killed with the rest of the blood royal. Two great adversaries say with
us ; Hugo Grotius.....saith he dare not condemn this, if the lesser part
of the people, and every one of them indifferently, should defend
themselves against a tyrant, ultimo necessitatis proesidio. The
case of Scotland, when we were blocked up by sea and land with armies:
the case of England, when the king, induced by prelates, first attempted
to bring an army to cut off parliament, and then gather an army, and
fortified York and invaded Hull, to make the militia his own, sure is
considerable. Barclay saith, the people hath....a power to defend
themselves against prodigious cruelty. The case of England and Ireland,
now invaded by bloody rebels of Ireland, is also worthy of
consideration. I could cite hosts more.
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