may be liable to hard Censures but those who use them most gently must confess that such an extreme deviation from the end of their Institution annuls it and the Wound thereby given to the natural and original Rights of those Nations cannot be cured unless they resume the Liberties of which they have bin deprived and return to the antient Custom of chusing those to be Magistrates who for their Vertues best deserve to be preferred before their Brethren and are endowed with those Qualities that best enable men to perform the great end of providing for the Publick Safety SECT XVII God having given the Government of the World to no one Man nor declared how it should be divided left it to the Will of Man OUR Author's next Inquiry is What becomes of the Right of Fatherhood in case the Crown should escheat for want of an Heir Whether it doth not escheat to the People His answer is 'T is but the negligence or ignorance of the People to lose the knowledg of the true Heir c. And a little below The Power is not devolved to the Multitude No the Kingly Power escheats on independent Heads of Families All such prime Heads have Power to consent in the uniting or conferring their Fatherly Right of Sovereign Authority on whom they please and he that is so elected claims not his Power as a Donative from the People but as being substituted by God from whom he receives his Royal Charter of Vniversal Father c. In my opinion before he had asked What should be done in case the Crown should escheat for want of an Heir he ought to have proved there had bin a Man in the world who had the Right in himself and telling who he was have shewed how it had bin transmitted for some Generations that we might know where to seek his Heir and before he accused the Multitude of ignorance or negligence in not knowing this Heir he ought to have informed us how it may be possible to know him or whâ—t it would avail us if we did know him for 't is in vain to know to whom a Right belongs that never was and never can be executed But we may go farther and affirm that as the Universal Right must have bin in Noah and Shem if in any who never exercised it we have reason to believe there never was any such thing And having proved from Scripture and Human History That the first Kingdoms were set up in a direct opposition to this Right by Nimrod and others he that should seek and find their Heirs would only find those who by a most accursed Wickedness had usurped and continued a Dominion over their Fathers contrary to the Laws of God and Nature and we should neither be more wise nor more happy than we are tho our Author should furnish us with certain and authentick Genealogies by which we might know the true Heirs of Nimrod and the seventy two Kings that went from Babylon who as he supposes gave beginning to all the Kingdoms of the Earth Moreover if the Right be Universal it must be in one for the Univers being but one the whole Right of commanding it cannot at the same time be in many and proceed from the Ordinance of God or of Man It cannot proceed from the Ordinance of God for he doth nothing in vain He never gave a Right that could not be executed No man can govern that which he dos not so much as know No man did ever know all the World no man therefore did or could govern it and none could be appointed by God to do that which is absolutely impossible to be done for it could not consist with his Wisdom We find this in our selves It were a shame for one of us poor weak short sighted Creatures in the disposal of our Affairs to appoint such a method as were utterly ineffectual for the preservation of our Families or destructive to them and the blasphemy of imputing to God such an Ordinance as would be a Reproach to one of us can sute only with the wicked and impudent Fury of such as our Author who delights in Monsters This also shews us that it cannot be from Men One or a few may commit Follies but mankind dos not universally commit and perpetually persist in any They cannot therefore by a general and permanent Authority enact that which is utterly absurd and impossible or if they do they destroy their own Nature and can no longer deserve the name of reasonable Creatures There can be therefore no such man and the solly of seeking him or his Heir that never was may be left to the Disciples of Filmer The Difficulties are as great if it be said The World might be divided into parcels and we are to seek the Heirs of the first Possessors for besides that no man can be obliged to seek that which cannot be found all men knowing that Caliginosa nocte haec premit Deus and that the Genealogies of mankind are so confused that unless possibly among the Jews we have reason to believe there is not a man in the world who knows his own Original it could be of no advantage to us tho we knew that of every one for the Division would be of no value unless it were at the first rightly made by him who had all the Authority in himself which dos no where appear and rightly deduced to him who according to that division claims a right to the parcel he enjoys and I fear our Author would terribly shake the Crowns in which the Nations of Europe are concerned if they should be perswaded to search into the Genealogies of their Princes and to judg of their Rights according to the proofs they should give of Titles rightly deduced by succession of Blood from the seventy two first Kings from whom our Author fancies all the Kingdoms of the World to be derived Besides tho this were done it would be to no purpose for the seventy two were not sent out by Noah nor was he or his Sons of that number but they went or were sent from Babylon where Nimrod reigned who as has bin already proved neither had nor could have any right at all but was a mighty Hunter even a proud and cruel Tyrant usurping a power to which he had no right and which was perpetually exercised by him and his Successors against God and his People from whence I may sasely conclude That no right can ever be derived and may justly presume it will be denied by none who are of better Morals and of more sound principles in matters of Law and Religion than Filmer and Heylin since 't is no less absurd to deduce a right from him that had none than to expect pure and wholsom Waters from a filthy polluted and poisonous Fountain If it be pretended that some other man since Noah had this universal Right it must either remain in one single person as his right Heir or be divided If in
justly can be quiet under it If God be the Fountain of Justice Mercy and Truth and those his Servants who walk in them no exercise of Violence Fraud Cruelty Pride or Avarice is patronized by him and they who are the Authors of those Villanies cannot but be the Ministers of him who sets himself up against God because 't is impossible that Truth and Falshood Mercy and Cruelty Justice and the most violent Oppression can proceed from the same Root It was a folly and a lie in those Jews to call themselves the Children of Abraham who did not the Works of Abraham and Christ declared them to be the Children of the Devil whose Works they did which words proceeding from the Eternal Truth do as well indicate to us whose Child and Servant every man is to be accounted as to those who first heard them If our Author 's former Assertions were void of Judgment and Truth his next Clause shews a great defect in his Memory and contradicts the former The Judgments of God says he who hath Power to give and take away Kingdoms are most just yet the ministry of Men who execute God's Judgments without Commission is sinful and damnable If it be true as he says that we are to look at the Power not the Ways by which it is gained and that he who hath it whether it be by Usurpation Conquest or any other means is to be accounted as Father or right Heir to the Father of the People to which Title the most sublime and divine Privileges are annexed a man who by the most wicked and unjust Actions advances himself to the Power becomes immediately the Father of the People and the Minister of God which I take to be a piece of Divinity worthy our Author and his Disciples It may be doubted what he means by a Commission from God for we know of none but what is outwardly by his Word or inwardly by his Spirit and I am apt to think that neither he nor his Abettors allowing of either as to the Point in question he doth fouly prevaricate in alledging that which he thinks cannot be of any effect If any man should say that the Word of God to Moses Joshua Ehud Gideon Samuel Jeroboam and Jehu or any others are in the like cases Rules to be observed by all because that which was from God was good that which was good is good and he that dos good is justified by it He would probably tell us that what was good in them is not good in others and that the Word of God doth justify those only to whom it is spoken That is to say No man can execute the just Judgments of God to the benefit of mankind according to the Example of those Servants of God without damnable sin unless he have a precise Word particularly directed to him for it as Moses had But if any man should pretend that such a Word was come to him he would be accounted an Enthusiast and obtain no credit So that which way soever the Clause be taken it appears to be full of Fraud confessing only in the Theory that which he thinks can never be brought into practice that his beloved Villanies may be thereby secured and that the glorious Examples of the most heroick Actions performed by the best and wisest men that ever were in the World for the benefit of mankind may never be imitated The next Clause shews that I did our Author no wrong in saying that he gave a right to Usurpation for he plainly says That whether the Prince be the supreme Father of his People or the true Heir of such a Father or whether he come to the Crown by Vsurpation or Election of the Nobles or People or by any other way whatsoever c. it is the only Right and Authority of the natural Father In the 3d Chap. Sect. 8. It skills not which way the King comes by his Power whether by Election Donation Succession or by any other means And in another place That we are to regard the Power not the Means by which it is gained To which I need say no more than that I cannot sufficiently admire the ingeniously invented Title of Father by Usurpation and confess that since there is such a thing in the World to which not only private men but whole Nations owe obedience whatsoever has been said antiently as was thought to express the highest excess of Fury and Injustice as Jus datum sceleri Jus omne in ferro est situm Jus licet in jugulos nostros sibi fecerit ense Sylla potens Mariusque ferox Cinna cruentus Caesareaeque domus series were solid Truths good Law and Divinity which did not only signify the actual exercise of the Power but induced a conscientious Obligation of obeying it The Powers so gained did carry in themselves the most sacred and inviolable Rights and the actors of the most detestable Villanies thereby became the Ministers of God and the Fathers of their subdued People Or if this be not true it cannot be denied that Filmer and his followers in the most impudent and outragious Blasphemy have surpassed all that have gone before them To confirm his Assertions he gives us a wonderful explanation of the fifth Commandment which he says enjoins Obedience to Princes under the terms of Honour thy Father and thy Mother drawing this Inference That as all Power is in the Father the Prince who hath it cannot be restrained by any Law which being grounded upon the perfect likeness between Kings and Fathers no man can deny it to be true But if Claudius was the Father of the Roman People I suppose the chast Messalina was the Mother and to be honoured by virtue of the same Commandment But then I fear that such as met her in the most obscene places were not only guilty of Adultery but of Incest The same Honour must needs belong to Nero and his vertuous Poppaea unless it were transferred to his new-made Woman Sporus or perhaps he himself was the Mother and the glorious Title of Pater Patriae belonged to the Raskal who married him as a Woman The like may be said of Agathocles Dionysius Phalaris Busiris Machanidas Peter the Cruel of Castille Christiern of Denmark the last Princes of the House of Valois in France and Philip the Second of Spain Those Actions of theirs which men have ever esteemed most detestable and the whole course of their abominable Government did not proceed from Pride Avarice Cruelty Madness and Lust but from the tender care of most pious Fathers Tacitus sadly describes the state of his Country Vrbs incendiis vastata consumptis antiquissimis delubris ipso Capitolio Civium manibus incenso pollutae Ceremoniae magna Adulteria plenum Exiliis mare infecti caedibus scopuli atrocius in Vrbe saevitum Nobilitas opes omissi vel gesti honores pro crimine ob virtutes certissimum exitium but he was to blame All this proceeded
The Paternal Right devolves to and is inherited by all the Children THO the perversity of our Author's Judgment and Nature may have driven him into the most gross Errors 't is not amiss to observe that many of those delivered by him proceed from his ignorance of the most important Differences between Father and Lord King and Tyrant which are so evident and irreconcilable that one would have thought no man could be so stupid as not to see it impossible for one and the same man at the same time to be Father and Master King and Tyrant over the same Persons But lest he should think me too scrupulous or too strict in inquiring after Truth I intend for the present to wave that inquiry and to seek what was good for Adam or Noah What we have reason to believe they desired to transmit to their Posterity and to take it for a perpetual Law in its utmost extent which I think will be of no advantage to our Author for this Authority which was universal during their lives must necessarily after their decease be divided as an Inheritance into as many parcels as they had Children The Apostle says If Children then Heirs Heirs of God and joint Heirs with Christ which alluding to the Laws and Customs of Nations could have bin of no force unless it had bin true and known to be so But if Children are Heirs or joint Heirs whatsoever Authority Adam or Noah had is inherited by every man in the world and that title of Heir which our Author so much magnifies as if it were annexed to one single person vanishes into nothing or else the words of the Apostle could have neither strength nor truth in them but would be built upon a false Foundation which may perhaps agree with our Author's Divinity Yet if the Apostle had not declared himself so fully in this Point we might easily have seen that Adam and Noah did leave their Children in that equality for Fathers are ever understood to embrace all their Children with equal Affection till the discovery of personal Vertues or Vices make a difference But the personal Vertues that give a reasonable preference of one before another or make him more fit to govern than the others cannot appear before he is nor can be annexed to any one Line Therefore the Father cannot be thought to have given to one Man or his Descendents the Government of his Brethren and their Descendents Besides tho the Law of England may make one man to be sole Heir of his Father yet the Laws of God and Nature do not so All the Children of Noah were his Heirs The Land promised to Abraham Isaac and Jacob was equally divided among their Children If the Children of Joseph made two Tribes it was not as the first born but by the Will of Jacob who adopted Ephraim and Manasseh and they thereby became his Sons and obtained an Inheritance equal to that of the other Tribes The Law allowed a double Portion to the first-begotten but this made a difference between Brothers only in proportion whereas that between Lord and Servant is in specie not in degree And if our Author's Opinion might take place instead of such a division of the common Inheritance between Brothers as was made between the Children of Jacob all must continue for ever Slaves to one Lord which would establish a difference in specie between Brethren which Nature abhors If Nature dos not make one man Lord over his Brethren he can never come to be their Lord unless they make him so or he subdue them If he subdue them it is an act of Violence contrary to Right which may consequently be recovered If they make him Lord 't is for their own sakes not for his and he must seek their good not his own lest as Aristotle says he degenerate from a King into a Tyrant He therefore who would perswade us that the Dominion over every Nation dos naturally belong to one Man Woman or Child at a venture or to the Heir whatsoever he or she be as to Age Sex or other Qualifications must prove it good for all Nations to be under them But as Reason is our Nature that can never be natural to us that is not rational Reason gives Paria paribus equal Power to those who have equal Abilities and Merit It allots to every one the part he is most fit to perform and this fitness must be equally lasting with the Law that allots it But as it can never be good for great Nations having men amongst them of Vertue Experience Wisdom and Goodness to be governed by Children Fools or vicious and wicked Persons and we neither find that the Vertues required in such as deserve to govern them did ever continue in any race of men nor have reason to believe they ever will it can never be reasonable to annex the Dominion of a Nation to any one Line We may take this upon Solomon's word Wo to thee O Land when thy King is a Child and thy Princes eat in the morning And I wish the experience of all Ages did not make this Truth too evident to us This therefore can never be the Work much less the Law of Nature and if there be any such thing in the world as the Dominion over a Nation inseparably united to a Man and his Family it can have no other Root than a civil or municipal Law which is not the subject of our Discourse Moreover every Father's Right must cease when he ceases to be or be transmitted to those who being also Fathers have the same Title to it And tho the contrary method of annexing the whole Inheritance to one Person or exposing all his Brethren to be destroyed by his rage if they will not submit may conduce to the enlargement of a proud and violent Empire as in Turky where he that gains the Power usually begins his Reign with the slaughter of his Brothers and Nephews yet it can never agree with the piety gentleness and wisdom of the Patriarchs or the Laws of God and Nature These things being agreed we need not trouble our selves with the Limits or Definition of a Family and as little with the Titles given to the Head of it 'T is all one to us whether it be confined to one Roof and Fire or extended farther and none but such as are strangers to the practice of mankind can think that titles of Civility have a power to create a right of Dominion Every man in Latin is called Dominus unless such as are of the vilest condition or in a great subjection to those who speak to them and yet the word strictly taken relates only to Servus for a Man is Lord only of his Servant or Slave The Italians are not less liberal of the Titles of Signore and Padrone and the Spaniards of Sennor but he would be ridiculous in those Countries who thereupon should arrogate to himself a right of Dominion over those who
sense of the words as they are understood in our Language by those who give them and conducing to the ends for which they are given which can be no other than to defend us from all manner of arbitrary Power and to fix a rule to which we are to conform our Actions and from which according to our deserts we may expect reward or punishment And those who by prevarications cavils or equivocations endeavour to dissolve these Obligations do either maliciously betray the cause of Kings by representing them to the world as men who prefer the Satisfaction of their irregular Appetites before the performance of their duty and trample under foot the most sacred bonds of human Society or from the grossest ignorance do not see that by teaching Nations how little they can rely upon the Oaths of their Princes they instruct them as little to observe their own and that not only because men are generally inclined to follow the examples of those in power but from a most certain conclusion that he who breaks his part of a Contract cannot without the utmost impudence and folly expect the performance of the other nothing being more known amongst men than that all Contracts are of such mutual obligation that he who fails of his part discharges the other If this be so between man and man it must needs be so between one and many millions of men If he were free because he says he is every man must be free also when he pleases if a private man who receives no benefit or perhaps prejudice from a Contract be obliged to perform the conditions much more are Kings who receive the greatest advantages the world can give As they are not by themselves nor for themselves so they are not different in specie from other men they are born live and die as we all do The same Law of Truth and Justice is given to all by God and Nature and perhaps I may say the performance of it is most rigorously exacted from the greatest of men The liberty of Perjury cannot be a privilege annexed to Crowns and 't is absurd to think that the most venerable Authority that can be conferred upon a man is increased by a liberty-to commit or impunity in committing such crimes as are the greatest aggravations of infamy to the basest villains in the world SECT XVIII The next in blood to deceased Kings cannot generally be said to be Kings till they are crowned 'T IS hereupon usually objected that Kings do not come in by Contract nor by Oath but are Kings by or according to proximity of Blood before they are crowned Tho this be a bold Proposition I will not say 't is universally false 'T is possible that in some places the rule of Succession may be set down so precisely that in some cases every man may be able to see and know the sense as well as the Person designed to be the Successor but before I acknowledg it to be universally true I must desire to know what this rule of Succession is and from whence it draws its original I think I may be excused if I make these scruples because I find the thing in dispute to be variously adjudged in several places and have observed five different manners of disposing Crowns esteemed Hereditary besides an infinite number of collateral Controversies arising from them of which we have divers examples and if there be one universal rule appointed one of these only can be right and all the others must be vicious The first gives the inheritance to the eldest Male of the eldest legitimate Line as in France according to that which they call the Salique Law The second to the eldest legitimate Male of the reigning Family as antiently in Spain according to which the Brother of the deceased King has bin often if not always preferr'd before the Son if he were elder as may appear by the dispute between Corbis and Orsua cited before from Titus Livius and in the same Country during the reign of the Goths the eldest Male succeeded whether Legitimate or Illegitimate The fourth receives Females or their Descendents without any other condition distinguishing them from Males except that the younger Brother is preferr'd before the elder Sister but the daughter of the elder Brother is preferr'd before the Son of the younger The fifth gives the Inheritance to Females under a condition as in Sweden where they inherit unless they marry out of the Country without the consent of the Estates according to which rule Charles Gustavus was chosen as any Stranger might have bin tho Son to a Sister of Gustavus Adolphus who by marrying a German Prince had forfeited her right And by the same act of Estates by which her eldest Son was chosen and the Crown entailed upon the Heirs of his Body her second Son the Prince Adolphus was wholly excluded Till these questions are decided by a Judg of such an undoubted Authority that all men may safely submit 't is hard for any man who really seeks the satisfaction of his Conscience to know whether the Law of God and Nature tho he should believe there is one general Law do justify the Customs of the antient Medes and Sabeans mentioned by the Poet who admitted Females or those of France which totally exclude them as unfit to reign over men and utterly unable to perform the duty of a supreme Magistrate as we see they are every where excluded from the exercise of all other Offices in the Commonwealth If it be said that we ought to follow the Customs of our own Country I answer that those of our own Country deserve to be observed because they are of our own Country But they are no more to be called the Laws of God and Nature than those of France or Germany and tho I do not believe that any general Law is appointed I wish I were sure that our Customs in this point were not more repugnant to the light of Nature and prejudicial to our selves than those of some other Nations But if I should be so much an Englishman to think the will of God to have bin more particularly revealed to our Ancestors than to any other Nation and that all of them ought to learn from us yet it would be difficult to decide many questions that may arise For tho the Parliament in the 36th of Henry the sixth made an Act in favour of Richard Duke of York descended from a Daughter of Mortimer who married the Daughter of the Duke of Clarence elder Brother to John of Gaunt they rather asserted their own power of giving the Crown to whom they pleased than determined the question For if they had believed that the Crown had belonged to him by a general and eternal Law they must immediately have rejected Henry as a Usurper and put Richard into the possession of his Right which they did not And tho they did something like to this in the cases of Maud the Empress in relation
latter Kings hath bin so gracious as to allow always of the intire Bill as it passed both Houses He judiciously observes when our Kings began to be gracious and we to be free That King excepting the persecution for Religion in his time which is rather to be imputed to the ignorance of that age than to any evil in his own nature governed well and as all Princes who have bin virtuous and brave have always desired to preserve their Subjects Liberty which they knew to be the mother and nurse of their Valour fitting them for great and generous Enterprizes his care was to please them and to raise their Spirits But about the same time those detestable Arts by which the mixed Monarchies in this part of the world have bin every where terribly shaken and in many places totally overthrown began to be practised Charles the seventh of France under pretence of carrying on a War against him and his Son took upon him to raise Mony by his own Authority and we know how well that method has bin pursued The mischievous sagacity of his Son Lewis the 11th which is now called King-Craft was wholly exerted in the subversion of the Laws of France and the Nobility that supported them His Successors except only Lewis the 12th followed his example and in other Nations Ferdinand of Arragon James the third of Scotland and Henry the seventh of England were thought to imitate him the most Tho we have little reason to commend all the Princes that preceded Henry the fifth yet I am inclined to date the general impairing of our Government from the death of that King and his valiant Brothers His weak Son became a prey to a furious French woman who brought the Maxims of her own Country into ours and advanced the worst of villains to govern according to them These measures were pursued by Edward the fourth whose wants contracted by prodigality and debauchery were to be supplied by fraud and rapine The ambition cruelty and persidiousness of Richard the third the covetousness and malicious subtilty of Henry the seventh the violent lust rage and pride of Henry the 8th and the bigotted fury of Queen Mary instigated by the craft and malice of Spain perswaded me to believe that the English Liberty did not receive birth or growth from the favour and goodness of their gracious Princes But it seems all this is mistaken Henry the sixth was wise valiant and no way guided by his Wife Edward the sourth continent sober and contented with what the Nation gave him Richard the third mild gentle and faithful Henry the 7th sincere and satisfied with his own Henry the 8th humble temperate and just and Queen Mary a friend to our Country and Religion No less praises sure can be due to those who were so gracious to recede from their own right of picking what they pleased out of our Laws and to leave them intirely to us as they passed both Houses We are beholden to our Author for the discovery of these mysteries but tho he seems to have taken an Oath like that of the Gypsies when they enter into that virtuous Society never to speak one word of truth he is not so subtle in concealing his Lies All Kings were trusted with the publication of the Laws but all Kings did not falsify them Such as were not wicked and vicious or so weak as to be made subservient to the malice of their Ministers and Flatterers could never be drawn into the guilt of so infamous a cheat directly contrary to the Oath of their Coronation They swear to pass such Laws as the People chuse but if we will believe our Author they might have pick'd out whatever they pleased and falsly imposed upon the Nation as a Law made by the Lords and Commons that which they had modelled according to their own will and made to be different from or contrary to the intention of the Parliament The King's part in this fraud of which he boasts was little more than might have bin done by the Speaker or his Clerks They might have falfified an Act as well as the King tho they could not so well preserve themselves from punishment 'T is no wonder if for a while no stop was put to such an abominable Custom 'T was hard to think a King would be guilty of a fraud that were infamous in a Slave But that proved to be a small security when the worst of Slaves came to govern them Nevertheless 't is probable they proceeded cautioufly the first alterations were perhaps innocent or it may be for the best But when they had once found out the way they stuck at nothing that seemed for their purpose This was like the plague of Leprosy that could not be cured the house infected was to be demolished the poisonous plant must be torn up by the root the trust that had bin broken was to be abolished they who had perverted or frustrated the Law were no longer to be suffered to make the least alteration and that brave Prince readily joined with his People to extinguish the mischievous abuse that had bin introduced by some of his worthless Predecessors The worst and basest of them had continual disputes with their Parliaments and thought that whatever they could detract from the Liberty of the Nation would serve to advance their Prerogative They delighted in frauds and would have no other Ministers but such as would be the instruments of them Since their Word could not be made to pass for a Law they endeavoured to impose their own or their Servants inventions as Acts of Parliaments upon the deluded people and to make the best of them subservient to their corrupt Ends and pernicious Counsels This if it had continued might have overthrown all our Rights and deprived us of all that men can call good in the world But the Providence of God furnished our Ancestors with an opportunity of providing against so great so universal a mischief They had a wise and valiant Prince who scorned to encroach upon the Liberties of his Subjects and abhorred the detestable Arts by which they had bin impair'd He esteemed their courage strength and love to be his greatest advantage riches and glory He aimed at the conquest of France which was only to be effected by the bravery of a free and well-satisfied People Slaves will always be cowards and enemies to their Master By bringing his Subjects into that condition he must infallibly have ruined his own designs and made them unfit to fight either for him or themselves He desired not only that his People should be free during his time but that his Successors should not be able by oblique and fraudulent ways to enslave them If it be a reproach to us that Women have reigned over us 't is much more to the Princes that succeeded our Henry that none of them did so much imitate him in his Government as Queen Elizabeth She did not go about to mangle Acts