The _Lex Rex_, or the _Law and the Prince_ (1644), by the Presbyterian divine Samuel Rutherford, was another book which incurred the vengeance of the Restoration, and for the same reasons as Goodwin's book or Milton's. It was burnt by the hangman at Edinburgh (October 16th, 1660), St. Andrews (October 23rd, 1660),[122:2] and London; its author was deprived of his offices both in the University and the Church, and was summoned on a charge of high treason before the Parliament of Edinburgh. His death in 1661 anticipated the probable legal sentence, and saved Rutherford from political martyrdom. His book was an answer to the _Sacra Sancta Regum Majestas_, in which the Divine Right of kings, and the duty of passive obedience, had been strenuously upheld. Its appearance in 1644 created a great sensation, and threw into the shade Buchanan's _De Jure Regni apud Scotos_, which had hitherto held the field on the popular side. The purpose and style of the book may be gathered from the passage in the preface, wherein the writer gives, as his reason for writing, the opinion that arbitrary government had "over-swelled all banks of law, that it was now at the highest float . . . that the naked truth was, that prelates, a wild and pushing cattle to the lambs and flocks of Christ, had made a hideous noise; the wheels of their chariot did run an unequal pace with the bloodthirsty mind of the daughter of Babel." The contention was, that all regal power sprang from the suffrages of the people. "The king is subordinate to the Parliament, not co-ordinate, for the constituent is above the constituted." "What are kings but vassals to the State, who, if they turn tyrants, fall from their right?" For the rest, a book so crammed and stuffed with Biblical quotations as to be most unreadable. And indeed, of all the features of that miserable seventeenth century, surely nothing is more extraordinary than this insatiate taste of men of all parties for Jewish precedents. Never was the enslavement of the human mind to authority carried to more absurd lengths with more lamentable results; never was manifested a greater waste, or a greater wealth, of ability. For that reason, though Rutherford may claim a place on our shelves, he is little likely ever to be taken down from them. But may the principles he contended for remain as undisturbed as his repose! The year following the burning of these books the House of Commons directed its vengeance against certain statutes passed by the Republican government. On May 17th, 1661, a large majority condemned the _Solemn League and Covenant_ to be burnt by the hangman, the House of Lords concurring. All copies of it were also to be taken down from all churches and public places. Evelyn, seeing it burnt in several places in London on Monday 22nd, exclaims, "Oh! prodigious change!" The Irish Parliament also condemned it to the flames, not only in Dublin, but in all the towns of Ireland.