George Buchanan on kings being bound by law

[Reformed Covenanter]

M.—Certainly I cannot deny that such princes deserved, and still deserve, to be fettered by laws; for no monster is more outrageous, or more pernicious than man, when, as in the fables of the poets, he has once degenerated into a brute.

B.—On this assertion you would insist still more if you had remarked what a complicated animal man is, and of what various monsters he is composed. This truth the ancient poets discerned with great acuteness, and expressed with no less elegance, when they record that, in the formation of man, Prometheus borrowed from the several animals certain particles with which he constituted his mingled frame. To recount the natures of all separately would be endless; but, undoubtedly, there appear evidently in man two abominable monsters, anger and lust.

And what else is the effect, or the object of laws, but to render these monsters obedient to reason, and to coerce them, while not obedient, by the power of their mandates. He, therefore, who releases either a king, or any other man, from the shackles of law, releases not only a single man, but sets loose against reason two of the most cruel monsters, and arms them for breaking through the barriers of order; so that truth and rectitude seem to have guided the tongue of Aristotle, when he said that “He who obeys the laws, obeys God and the law; and that he who obeys man, obeys man and a wild beast.”

For the reference, see George Buchanan on kings being bound by law.

 

[Phil D.]

By contrast, here is what King James I said with regard to the supposed Divine Right of Kings in an address delivered to Parliament in 1610:

Kings are justly called gods; for they exercise a manner of resemblance of divine power upon earth. For if you will consider the attributes of God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king. God hath power to create or destroy, make or unmake at His pleasure, to give life or send death, to judge all and to be accountable to none. And the like power have kings. They make and unmake their subjects; they have power of raising up or casting down; of life and death; judges over all their subjects and in all cases, yet accountable to none but God.​

(Kate Aughterson, The English Renaissance: An Anthology of Sources and Documents, [London: Routledge, 1998], 121.)​

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

By contrast, here is what King James I said with regard to the supposed Divine Right of Kings in an address delivered to Parliament in 1610:

Kings are justly called gods; for they exercise a manner of resemblance of divine power upon earth. For if you will consider the attributes of God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king. God hath power to create or destroy, make or unmake at His pleasure, to give life or send death, to judge all and to be accountable to none. And the like power have kings. They make and unmake their subjects; they have power of raising up or casting down; of life and death; judges over all their subjects and in all cases, yet accountable to none but God.​

(Kate Aughterson, The English Renaissance: An Anthology of Sources and Documents, [London: Routledge, 1998], 121.)​

I have upset people in the past by pointing out how highly regarded James was by various Reformed divines. I partly blame George Buchanan for being too liberal at administering butt-whippings to the young James, as I think that may have provoked him to authoritarianism.