abstract: In any community there is an active and passive power to government.—Popular government is not that wherein the whole people are governors.—People by nature are equally indifferent to all the three governments, and are not under any one by nature.—The P. Prelate denieth the Pope his father to be the antichrist.—The bad success of kings chosen by people proveth nothing against us, because kings chosen by God had bad success through their own wickedness.—The P. Prelate condemneth king Charles' ratifying (Parl. 2, an. 1641) the whole proceedings of Scotland in this present reformation.—That there be any supreme judges is an eminent act of divine providence, which hindereth not but that the king is made by the people.—The people not patients in making a king, as is water in the sacrament of baptism, in the act of production of grace.

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by Rev. Samuel Rutherford

Whether the Prelate proveth by force of reason that the people cannot be capable of any power of government.

Ans.—

1. The P. Prelate might have thanked Spalato for this argument, but he doth not so much as cite him, for fear his theft be apprehended; but Spalato hath it set down with stronger nerves than the Prelate's head was able to copy out of him. But Jac. de Almain,¹ and Navarrus,² sottish Prelate say this virtual power is idle, and in vain given of God, because it doth not formally heat your hand when you touch it.
2. The P. Prelate, who is excommunicated for Popery, Socinianism, Arminianism, and is now turned apostate to Christ and his church, must have changed his faith, not we, and be unreasonably ignorant, to press that axiom, That the power is idle that cannot be reduced to acts; for a generative power is given to living and sensitive creatures,—this power is not idle though it be not reduced in act by all and every individual sensitive creature. A power of seeing is given to all who naturally do, or ought to see, yet it is not an idle power because divers are blind, seeing it is put forth in action in divers of the kind; so this power in the community is not idle because it is not put forth in acts in the people in which it is virtually, but is put forth in action in some of them whom they choose to be their governors; nor is it reasonable to say that it should be put forth in action by all the people, as if all should be kings and governors. But the question is not of the power of governing in the people, but of the power of government, that is, of the power of making governors and kings; and the community doth put forth in act this power, as a free voluntary, and active power; for
   1. a community transplanted to India, or any place of the world not before inhabited, have a perfect liberty to choose either a monarchy, or a democracy, or an aristocracy; for though nature incline them to government in general, yet are they not naturally determinated to any one of those three more than another.
   2. Israel did of their own free will choose the change of government, and would have a king as the nations had; therefore they had free will, and so an active power so to do, and not a passive inclination only to be governed, such as Spalato saith agreeth to the first matter.
   3. Royalists teach that a people under democracy or aristocracy have liberty to choose a king; and the Romans did this, therefore they had an active power to do it,—therefore the Prelate's simile crooks: the matter at its pleasure cannot shake off its form, nor the wife cast off her husband being once married; but Barclaius, Grotius, Arnisæns, Blackwood, and all the royalists, teach that the people under any of these two forms of democracy or aristocracy may resume their power, and cast off these forms and choose a monarch; and if monarchy be the best government, as royalists say, they may choose the best. And is this but a passive capacity to be governed?
   4. Of ten men fit for a kingdom they may design one, and put the crown on his head, and refuse the other nine, as Israel crowned Solomon and refused Adonijah. Is this not a voluntary action, proceeding from a free, active, elective power? It will puzzle the pretended Prelate to deny this,—that which the community doth freely, they do not from such a passive capacity as is in the first matter in regard of the form.
3. It is true that people, through corruption of nature, are averse to submit to governore for conscience sake, as unto the Lord, because the natural man, remaining in the state of nature, can do nothing that is truly goos, but is false that men have no active moral power to submit to superiors, but only a passive capacity to be governed. He quite contradicteth himself; for he said before, (c. 4, p. 49,) that there is an innate fear and reverence in the hearts of all men naturally, even in heathens, toward their sovereign; yea, as we have a natural moral active power to love our parents and superiors, (though it be not evangelically, or legally in God's court, good) and so to obey their commandments, only we are averse to penal laws of superiors. But this proveth no way that we have only by nature a passive capacity to government; for heathens have, by instinct of nature, both made laws morally good, submitted to them, and set kings and judges over them, which clearly proveth that men have an active power of government by nature. Yea, what difference maketh the Prelate betwixt men and beasts? for beasts have a capacity to be governed, even lions and tigers; but here is the matter, if men have any natural power of government, the P. Prelate would have it, with his brethren the Jesuits and Arminians, to be not natural, but done by the help of universal grace; for so do they confound nature and grace. But it is certain our power to submit to rulers and kings, as to rectors, and guides, and fathers, is natural; to submit to tyrants in doing ills of sin is natural, but in suffering ills of punishment is not natural. No man can give that which he hath not, is true, but that people have no power to make their governors is that which is in question, and denied by us. This argument doth prove that people hath no power to appoint aristocratical rulers more than kings, and so the aristocratical and democratical rulers are all inviolable and sacred as the king. By this the people may not resume their freedom if they turn tyrants and oppressors. This the Prelate shall deny, for he averreth, (p. 98,) out of Augustine, that the people may, without sin, change a corrupt democracy into a monarchy.

Ans.—

1. The P. Prelate might thank Spalato for this argument also,⁴ for it is stolen; but he never once named him, lest his theft should be apprehended. So are his other arguments stolen from Spalato; but the Prelate weakeneth them, and it is seen stolen goods are not blessed, Spalato saith, then, bu the law of nature every commonwealth should be governed by the people, and by the law of nature the people should be under the worst government; but this consequence is nothing; for a community of many families is formally and of themselves under no government, but may choose any of the three; for popular government is not that wherein all the people are rulers, for this is confusion and not government, because all are rulers, and none are governed and ruled. But in popular government many are chosen out of the people to rule; and that this is the worst government is said gratis, without warrant; and if monarchy be the best of itself, yet, when men are in the state of sin, in some other respects it hath many inconveniences.
2. I see not how democracy is best because nearest to the multitude's power of making a king; for if all the three depend upon the free will of the people, all are alike afar off, and alike near hand, to the people's free choice, according as they see most conducive to the safety and protection of the commonwealth, seeing the forms of government are not more natural than politic incorporations of cities, yea, than of shires; but from a positive institution of God, who erecteth this rather than that, not immediately now, but mediately, by the free will of men; no one cometh formally, and ex natur a rei, nearer to the fountain than another, except that materially domocracy may come nearer to the people's power than monarchy, but the excellency of it above monarchy is not hence concluded; for by this reason the number of four should be more excellent than the number of five, of ten, of a hundred, of a thousand, or of millions, because four cometh near to the number of three, which Aristotle calleth the first perfect number, cui additur τὀ πᾶγ of which yet formally all do alike share in the nature and essence of number.
3. It is denied that it followeth from this antecedent, that the people have power to choose their own governors; therefore all governments except democracy, or government by the people, must be sinful and unlawful.
   1. Because government by kings is of divine institution, and of other judges also, as is evident from God's word, Rom. xiii. 1-3; Deut. xvii. 14; Prov. viii. 15, 16; 1 Pet. ii. 13, 14; Psal. ii. 10, 11, &c.
   2. Power of choosing any form of government is in the people; therefore there is no government lawful but popular government. It followeth no ways; but presupposeth that power to choose any form of government must be formally actual government; which is most false, yea, they be contrary, as the prevalency or power and the act are contrary; so these two are contrary, or opposite. Neither is sovereignty, nor any government, formally inherent in either the community by nature, nor in any one particular man by nature, and that everyman is born free, so as no man, rather than his brother, is born a king and a ruler, I hope, God willing, to make good, so as the Prelate shall never answer on the contrary.
4. It followeth not that the posterity living, when their fathers made a covenant with their first elected king, may without any breach of covenant on the king's part, make void and null their fathers' election of a king, and choose another king, because the lawful covenant of the fathers, in point of government, if it is not broken, tyeth the children, but it cannot deprive them of their lawful liberty naturally inherent in them to choose the fittest man to be king; but of this hereafter more fully.
5. Spalato addeth, (the Prelate is not a faithful thief,) If the community by the law of nature have power of all forms of government, and so should be, by nature, under popular government, and yet should refuse a monarchy and an aristocracy, yet, Augustine addeth,⁶ If the people should prefer their own private gain to the public good, and sell the commonwealth, then some good men might take their liberty from them, and, against their will, erect a monarchy or an aristocracy. But the Prelate (p. 97) and Augustine supposeth the people to be under popular government. This is not our case; for Spalato and the Prelate presupposeth by our gournds that the people by nature must be under popular government. Augustine dreameth no such thing, and we deny that by nature they are under any form of government. Augustine, in a case most considerable thinketh one good and potent man may take the corrupt people's power of giving honours, and making rulers from them, and give it to some good men, few or many, or to one; then Augustine layeth down as a ground that which Spalato and the Prelate denieth,—that the people hath power to appoint their own rulers; otherwise, how could one man take that power from them? The Prelate's fifth argument is but a branch of the fourth argument, and answered already.

Ans.—I am not to follow the Prelate's order every way, though, God willing, I shall reach him in the forthcoming chapters. Nor purpose I to answer his treasonable railing against his own nation, and the judges of the land, whom God hath set over this seditious excommunicated apostate. He layeth to us frequently the Jesuit's tenets, when as he is known himself to be a papist. In this argument he saith, Abimelech did reign only three years, well near Antichrist's reign. Is not this the basis and the mother principle of popery, that the Pope is not the Antichrist, for the Pope hath continued many ages? He is not an individual man, but a race of men; but the Antichrist, saith Belarmine, Stapleton, Becanus, and the nation of Jesuits and poplings, shall be one individual man—a born Jew, and shall reign only three years and a half. But,

1. The argument from success proveth nothing, except the Prelate prove their bad success to be from this, because they were chosen of the people. When as Saul chosen of God, and most of the kings of Israel and Judah, who, undeniably, had God's calling to the crown, were not blessed of God; and their government was a ruin to both people and religion, as the people were removed to all the kingdoms of the earth, for the sins of Manasseh, Jer. xv. 4. Was therefore Manasseh not lawfully called to the crown?
2. For his instance of kings unlawfully called to the throne, he bringeth us whole two, and telleth us that he doubteth, as many learned men do, whether Jeroboam was a king by permission only, or by a commission from God.
3. Abimelech was cursed, because he wanted God's calling to the throne; for then Israel had no king, but judges, extraordinarily raised up by God; and God did not raise him at all, only he came to the throne by blood, and carnal reasons moving the men of Sechem to advance him. The argument presupposeth that the whole lawful calling of a king is the voices of the people. This we never taught, though the Prelate make conquest a just title to a crown, and it is but a title of blood and rapine.
4. Abimelech was not the first king, but only a judge. All our divines, with the word of God, maketh Saul the first king.
5. For Jeroboam had God's word and promise to be king, 1 Kings xi. 34-36. But, in my weak judgment, he waited not God's time and way of coming to the crown; but that his coming to the throne was unlawful, because he came by the people's election, is in question.
6. That the people's reformation, and their making a new king, was like the kingdom of Scotland's reformation, and the parliament of England's way now, is a traitorous calumny. For
   1. It condemneth the king, who hath, in parliament, declared all their proceedings to be legal. Rehoboam never declared Jeroboam's coronation to be lawful, but, contrary to God's word, made war against Israel.
   2. It is false that Israel pretended religion in that change. The cause was the rough answer given to the supplication of the estates, complaining of the oppression they were under in Solomon's reign.
   3. Religion is still subjected to policy by prelates and cavaliers, not by us in Scotland, who sought nothing but reformation of religion, and of laws so far as they serve religion, as our supplications, declarations, and the event proveth.
   4. We have no new calves, new altars, new feasts, but profess, and really do hazard, life and estate, to put away the Prelate's calves images, tree-worship, saints, feast-days, idolatry, masses; and nothing is said here but Jesuits, and Canaanites, and Baalites, might say, (though falsely) against the reformation of Josiah. Truth and purity of worship this year is new in relation to idolatry last year, but it is simpliciter older
   5. We have not put away the Lord's priests and Levites, and taken in the scum of the vulgar, but h\ave put away Baal's priests, such as excommunicated Prelate Maxwell and other apostates, and resumed the faithful servants of God, who were deprived and banished for standing to the Protestant faith, sworn to by the prelates themselves.
   6. Every action of Christ, such as his walking on the sea, is not our instruction in that sense, that Christ's refusing a kingdom is directly our instruction. And did Christ refuse to be a king, because the people would have made him a king? That is, non causa pro cause, he refused it, because his kingdom was not in this world, and he came to suffer for men, not to reign over man.
   7. The Prelate, and others who were lords of session, and would be judges of men's inheritances, and would usurp the sword by being lords of council and parliament, have refused to be instructed by every action of Christ, who would not judge betwixt brother and brother.

Ans.—It was as extraordinary that Jephthah, a bastard and the son of an harlot, should be judge, as that Gideon should be judge. God vindicateth to himself, that he giveth his people favour in the eyes of their enemies. But doth it follow that the enemies are not agents, and to be commended for their humanity in favouring the people of God? So Psal. lxv. 9, 10, God maketh corn to grow, therefore clouds, and earth, and sun, and summer, and husbandry, contributeth nothing to the growing of corn. But this is but that which he said before. We grant that this is an eminent and singular act of God's special providence, that he moveth and boweth the wills of a great multitude of promote such a man, who, by nature, cometh no more out of the womb a crowned king, than the poorest shepherd in the land; and it is an act of grace to endue him with heroic and royal parts for the government. But what is all this? Doth it exclude the people's consent? In no ways. So the works of supernatural grace, as to love Christ above all things, to believe in Christ in a singular manner, are ascribed to the rich grace of God. But can the Prelate say that the understanding and will, in these acts, are merely passive, and contributeth no more than the people contributeth to royal authority in the king? and that is just nothing by the Prelate's way. And we utterly deny, that as water in baptism hath no action at all in the working of remission of sins, so the people hath no influence in making a king; for the people are worthier and more excellent than the king, and they have an active power of ruling and directing themselves toward the intrinsical end of human policy, which is the external safety and peace of a society, in so far as there are moral principles of the second table, for this effect, written in their hears; and, therefore, that royal authority which by God's special providence, is united in one king, and, as it were, over-gilded and lustred with princely grace and royal endowments, is diffused in the people, for the people hath an after-approbative consent in making a king, as royalists confess water hath no such action in producing grace

Endnotes

1. M. Anto. de domini. Arch. Spalatens. lib. 6, c. 2, n. 5, 6. Pleba potius habet a natura, non tam vim active rectivam aut gubernativam, quam inclinationem passive regibilem (ut ita loquar) et gubernabilem, qua volens et libena sese submittit rectoribus, &c.

2. Almain de potest et La. 1, q. 1, c. 1, 6, et q. 2, 3, 5.

3. Nem. don jud. not. 3, n. 85.

4. Spalatensis, p. 648.

5. Spalato 16.

6. August. de lib. arb., lib. 1, c. 6. Si depravatus populus rem privatum Reipub. preferat. atque habeat venale suffragium cor ruptusque ab iis qui honores amant, regnum in sefactiosis consecleratisque committat; non ne item recte, si quis tunc extilerit vir bonus qui plaximum possit adimat huic populo potestatem dandi honores, et in paveorum bonorum, vel etiam unjus redregat arbitrium?

*It's "authorit" with a line break between the o and the r in the book

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