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of Edinburgh, Session 1880 - 81 . 
of England, and has threatened to make a party of sectaries, to 
extort by force, both from King and Parliament, what conditions 
they thought meet.” 
So stood, during the lifetime of Charles, the controversy 
between the Presbyterians and the Independents in the English 
parliament, when the treatise of which I now speak was written. 
It was first printed in 1644. It is written in good, nervous, 
vernacular English, and is evidently the work of a man of learning 
and culture. Bishop Burnet sneers at the attainments of the Scots 
delegates Henderson, Rutherford, and Gillespie, hut there is no 
doubt they were men of mark in an assembly which boasted 
Selden as one of their number. This treatise is full of traces of 
extensive erudition ; somewhat overlaid with quotation and example 
from ancient authority, as the fashion of the time was; but the 
style is clear and manly, and the continuity of the reasoning well 
sustained. The author, although without much acknowledgment, 
follows the line of Buchanan, as the next and more famous treatise 
follows largely the illustrations of Rutherford. The work professes 
to be a reply to a pamphlet by Maxwell, the deposed Bishop of Ross, 
in which he undertakes to establish the divine right of kings, and 
the unlawfulness of resistance on the part of the people. Maxwell 
entitles it “ Sacro-sancta Regum Majestas.” I of course do not 
mean to follow Rutherford through his demonstration. My main 
object is to show, that in proving that law is king, the author had 
in view throughout the true constitutional principle, as we now 
understand it, and gives his vote, with no uncertain sound, for 
King, Lords, and Commons. One or two quotations from his work 
will place this beyond question. He says in one passage, “ Power 
and absolute monarchy is tyranny, unmixed democracy is confu- 
sion, untempered aristocracy is factious dominion.” And when he 
comes to consider the question which he propounds “Whether 
monarchy be the best of governments,” he thus resolves it — 
“ Nothing more unwillingly do I write than one word of this 
question. It is a dark way ; circumstances in fallen nature make 
things to be hie et nunc evil, though it appears to me probable that 
monarchy in itself, monarchy de jure , that is, lawful and limited 
monarchy, is best even now, if other circumstances be considered.” 
Then, after illustrating various views of this proposition, he thus 
VOL. XI. 
u 
