scripture is, God our Maker, and the Lord our Maker. And therefore though our author, for the magnifying his fatherhood, be pleased to say, Observations, 159. That even the power which God himself exercisclh over mankind is GO OF GOVERNMENT.
by right of fatherhood, yet this fatherhood is such an one as utterly excludes all pretence of title in earthly parents; for he is king, because he is indeed maker of us all, which no parents can pretend to be of their children.
§. 54. But had men skill and power to make their children, it is not so slight a piece of workmanship, that it can be imagined, they could make them without designing it. What father of a thousand, when he begets a child, thinks farther than the satisfying his present appetite! God in his infinite wisdom has put strong desires of copulation into the consti- tution of men, thereby to continue the race of mankind, which he doth most commonly with- out the intention, and often against the consent and will of the begetter. And indeed those who desire and design children, are but the occasions of their being, and when they design and wish to beget them, do little more towards their making, than Deucalion and his wife in the fable did towards the making of mankind, by throwing pebbles over their heads.
§. 55. But grant that the parents made their children, gave them life and being, and that hence there followed an absolute power. This would give the father but a joint dominion with the mother over them: for nobody can deny but that the woman hath an equal share, if not the greater, as nourishing the child a long time in her own body out of her own substance; there it is fashioned, and from her OF GOVERNMENT. <M it receives the materials and principles of its constitution: and it is so hard to imagine the rational soul should presently inhabit the yet unformed embrio, as soon as the father has done his part in the act of generation, that if it must be supposed to derive any thing from the parents, it must certainly owe most to the mother. But be that as it will, the mother cannot be denied an equal share in begetting of the child, and so the absolute authority of of the father will not arise from hence. Our author indeed is of another mind; for he says, We know that God at the creation gave the sovereignty to the man over the woman, as being the nobler and principal agent in generation, Observations, 172. I remember not this in my Bible; and when the place is brought where God at the creation gave the sovereignty to man over the woman, and that for this reason, because he is the nobler and principal agent in generation, it will be time enough to consider, and answer it. But it is no new thing for our author to tell us his own fancies for certain and divine truths, though there be often a great deal of difference between his and divine revelations; for God in scripture says, his father and his mother that begot him. §. 56. They who alledge the practice of mankind, for exposing or selling their children, as a proof of their power over them, are with Sir Robert happy arguers; and cannot but recommend their opinion, by founding it on 62 OF GOVERNMENT.
Ihe most shameful action, and most unnatural murder, human nature is capable of. The dens of lions and nurseries of wolves know no such cruelty as this: these savage inhabitants of the desalt obey God and nature in being- tender and careful of their offspring: they will hunt, watch, fight, and almost starve for the preservation of their young; never part with them; never forsake them, till they are able to shift for themselves. And is it the privilege of man alone to act more contrary to nature than the wild and most untamed part of the creation? Doth God forbid us under the se- verest penalty, that of death, to take away the life of any man, a stranger, and upon provoca- tion? and does he permit us to destroy those, he has given us the charge of; and by the dictates of nature and reason, as well as his revealed command, requires us to preserve? He has in all the parts of the creation taken a peculiar care to propagate and continue the several species of creatures, and make the in- dividuals act so strongly to this end, that they sometimes neglect their own private good for it, and seem to forget that general rule, which nature teaches all things, of self-preservation; and the preservation of their young, as the strongest principle in them, over-rules the constitution of their particular natures. Thus we see, when their young stand in need of it, the timorous become valiant, the fierce and savage kind, and the ravenous tender and liberal.
OF GOVERNMENT. 03 &..57. But if the example of what bath been done, be the rule of what ought to be, history would have furnished our author with instances of this absolute fatherly power in its height and perfection, and he might have shewed us in Peru, people that begot children on purpose to fatten and eat them. The story is so remarkable that I cannot but set it down in the author's words. " In some provinces, says he, " they were so liquorish after man's flesh, that " they would not have the patience to stay " till the breath was out of the body, but " would suck the blood as it ran from the " wounds of the dying man; they had public " shambles of man's flesh, and their madness " herein was to that degree, that they spared " not their own children, which they had begot " on strangers taken in war: for they made " their captives their mistresses, and choicely " nourished the children they had by them, till " about thirteen years old they butchered and " eat them; and they served the mothers after " the same fashion, when they grew past child- " bearing, and ceased to bring them any more " roasters." Garci lasso de la vega Hist, ties §. 58. Thus far can the busy mind of man carry him to a brutality below the level of beasts, when he quits his reason, which places him almost equal to angels. Nor can it be otherwise in a creature, whose thoughts are more than the sands, and wider than the ocean, Gi OF GOVERNMENT.
-where fancy and passion must needs run him into strange courses, if reason, which is his only star and compass be not that he steers by. The imagination is always restless, and suggests variety of thoughts, and the will, reason being laid aside, is ready for every extra- vagant project; and in this state, he that goes farthest out of the way, is thought fittest to lead, and is sure of most followers: and when fashion hath once established what folly or craft began, custom makes it sacred, and if will be thought impudence, or madness, to con- tradict or question it. He that will imparti- ally survey the nations of the world, will find so much of their religions, governments and manners, brought in and continued amongst them by these means, that he will have but little reverence for the practices which are in use and credit amongst men; and will have reason to think, that the woods and forests, where the irrational untaught inhabitants keep right by following nature, are fitter to give us rules, than cities and palaces, where those that call themselves civil and rational, go out of their way, by the authority of example. If precedents are sufficient to establish a rule in this case, our author might have found in holy writ children sacrificed by their parents, and this amongst the people of God themselves: the Psalmist tells us, Psal. cvi. 38. They shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto OF GOVERNMENT, G-3 the idols of Canaan. But God judged not of this by our author's rule, nor allowed of the authority of practice against his righteous law; but as it follows there, the land teas polluted with blood; therefore teas the wrath of the Lord kindled against his people, insomuch that he abhorred his own inheritance. The killing of their children, though it were fashionable, was charged on them as innocent blood, and so had in the account of God the guilt of murder, as the offering them to idols had the guilt of idolatry.
§. 59. Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and cas- trate their children, Observations, 155. Let it be, that they exposed them; add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables, to fat and eat them: if this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same argument, justify adultery, incest and sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both ancient and modern; sins, which I suppose have their principal aggravation from this, that they cross the main intention of nature, which willeth the increase of mankind, and the continuation of the species in the high- est perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage-bed, as necessary thereunto.
§. 60. In confirmation of this natural autho- rity of the father, our author brings a lame proof from the positive command of God in 66 OF GOVERNMENT.
scripture: his words are, To confirm the natural right of regal power, ice find in the Decalogue, that the law which enjoins obedience to kings, is delivered in the terms, Honour thy father, p. 23. Whereas many confess, that government only in the abstract, is the ordinance of God, they are not able to prove any such ordinance in the scripture, but only in the fatherly power; and therefore we find the commandment, thai enjoins obedience to superiors, given in the terms, Honour thy father; so that not only the power and right of government, but the form of the power governing, and the person having the power, are all the ordinances of God. The first father had not only simply power, but power monarchical, as he was father immediately from God, Observations, 254. To the same purpose, the same law is cited by our author in several other places, and just after the same fashion; that is, and mother, as apochrvphal words, are always left out; a great argument of our authors ingenuity, and the goodness of his cause, which required in its defender zeal to a degree of warmth, able to warp the sacred rule of the word of God, to make it comply with his present occasion; a way of proceeding not unusual to those, who embrace not truths, because reason and revelation offer them, but espouse tenets and parties for ends different from truth, and then resolve at any rate to defend them; and so do with the words and sense of authors, they would fit to their purpose, OF GOVERNMENT. 07 just as Procrustes did with his guests, lop or stretch them, as may best fit them to the size of their notions: and they always prove like those so served, deformed, lame, and useless.
§. 61. For had our author set down this com- mand without garbling, as God gave it, and joined mother to father, every reader would have seen, that it had made directly against him; and that it was so far from establishing the monarchical power of the father, that it set up the mother equal with him, and enjoined nothing but what was due in common, to both father and mother: for that is the constant tenor ' of the scripture, Honour thy father and thy mother, Exod. xx. He that smiteth his father or mother, shall surely he put to death, xxi. 15. He that curs el h his father or mother, shall surely be put to death, ver. 17. Repeated, Lev. xx. 9. and by our Saviour, Matth. xv. 4. Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father, Lev. xix. 3. If a man have a rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother; then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and say, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he ivill not obey our voice, Deut. xxi. 18, 19, 20, 21. Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother, xxviii. 16*. My son, hear the instructions of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother, are the words of Solomon, a king who was not ignorant of what belonged to him as f2 f2 6*8 OF GOVERNMENT.
a father or a king; and yet he joins father and mother together, in all the instruction he gives children quite through his book of Proverbs. Woe unto him, that sayeth unto his father. What beget test thou? or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth? Isa. xi. ver. 10. In thee hare they set light by father or mother, Ezek. xxviii. *2. And it shall come to jrnss, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him, shall say unto him, thou shall not live; and his father and his mother that begat him, shall thrust him through when he prophesieth, Zech. xiii. 3. Here not the father only, but the father and mother jointly, had power in this case of life and death. Thus ran the law of the Old Tes- tament, and in the New they are likewise joined, in the obedience of their children, Eph. vi. J. The rule is, Children, obey your parents; and I do not remember, that I any where read, Children, obey your father, and no more: the scripture joins mother too in that homage, which is due from children; and had there been any text, where the honour or obedience of children had been directed to the father alone, it is not likely that our author, who pretends to build all upon scripture, would have omitted it: nay, the scripture makes the authority of father and mother, in respect of those they have begot, so equal, that in some places it neglects even the priority of order, which is thought due to the father, and the mother is put first, OF GOVERNMENT. 09 as Lev. xix. 3. from which so constantly joining father and mother together, as is found quite through the scripture, we may conclude that the honour they have a title to from their children, is one common right belonging so equally to them both, that neither can claim it wholly, neither can be excluded.
§. 62. One would wonder then how our au- thor infers from the fifth commandment, that all power ivas originally in the father; how he finds monarchical power of government settled and fixed by the commandment, Honour thy father and thy mother. If all the honour due by the commandment, be it what it will, be the only right of the father because he, as our author says, has the sovereignty over the woman, as being the nobler and principaler agent in generation, why did God afterwards all along join the mother with him, to share in his honour? can the father, by this sovereignty of his, dis- charge the child from paying this honour to his mother? The scripture gave no such licence to the Jews, and yet there were often breaches wide enough betwixt husband and wife, even to divorce and separation: and, I think, nobody will say a child may with-hold honour from his mother, or, as the scripture terms it, set light by her, though his father should com- mand him to do so; no more than the mother could dispense with him for neglecting to honour his father: whereby it is plain, that this command of God gives the father no sove- reignty, no supremacy.
70 OF GOVERNMENT.
§. 63. 1 agree with our author that the title to this honour is vested in the parents by na- ture, and is a right which accrues to them by their having begotten their children, and God by many positive declarations has confirmed it to them: I also allow our authors rule, that in grants and gifts, that have their original from God and nature, as the power of the father, (let me add and mother, for whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder) no inferior power of men can limit, nor make any law of prescription against them, Obser- vations, 158. So that the mother having, by this law of God, a right to honour from her children, which is not subject to the will of her husband, we see this absolute monarchical power of the father can neither be founded on it, nor consist with it; and he has a power very far from monarchical, very far from that absoluteness our author contends; when ano- ther has over his subjects the same power he hath, and by the same title: and therefore he cannot forbear saying himself that he cannot see how any mans children can be free from subjection to their parents, p. 12. which, in common speech, I think, signifies mother as well as father; or if parents here signifies only father, it is the first time I ever yet knew it to do so, and by such an use of words one may say any thing.
§. 64. By our author's doctrine, the father, having absolute jurisdiction over his children, OF GOVERNMENT. 71 has also Hie same over their issue; and the consequence is good, were it true, that the father had such a power: and yet I ask our author whether the grandfather, by his sove- reignty, could discharge the grandchild from paying to his father the honour due to him by the fifth commandment. If the grandfather hath, by right of fatherhood, sole sovereign power in him, and that obedience which is due to the supreme magistrate, be commanded in these words, Honour thy father, it is certain the grandfather might dispense with the grand- son's honouring his father, which since it is evident in common sense he cannot, it follows from hence, that Honour thy father and mother, cannot mean an absolute subjection to a sove- reign power, but something else. The right therefore which parents have by nature, and which is confirmed to them by the fifth com- mandment, cannot be that political dominion which our author would derive from it: for that being in every civil society supreme some- where, can discharge any subject from any political obedience to any one of his fellow- subjects. But what law of the magistrate can i^ive a child liberty, not to honour his father and mother? It is an eternal law, annexed purely to the ralation of parents and children, and so contains nothing of the magistrate's power in it, nor is subjected to it.
§. 05. Our author says, God hath given, to a father a right or liberty to alien his power over 72 OF GOVERNMENT.
his children to any other, Observations, 155. 1 doubt whether he can alien wholly the right of honour that is due from them: but be that as it will, this 1 am sure, lie cannot alien, and retain the same power. If therefore the ma- gistrate's sovereignty be, as our author would have it, nothing but the authority of a su- preme father, p. 23. it is unavoidable, that if the magistrate hath all this paternal right, as he must have if fatherhood be the fountain of all authority; then the subjects, though fathers, can have no power over their children, no right to honour from them: for it cannot be all in another's hands, and a part remain with the parents. So that, according to our author's own doctrine, Honour thy father and mother cannot possibly be understood of political subjection and obedience; since the laws both in the Old and New Testament, that com- manded children to honour and obey their parents, were given to such, whose fathers were under civil government, and fellow-sub- jects with them in political societies; and to have bid them honour and obey their parents, in our authors sense, had been to bid them be subjects to those who had no title to it; the right to obedience from subjects, being all vested in another; and instead of teaching-