the 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 desart 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 severest penalty, that of death, to take away the life of any man, a stranger, and upon provocation? 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 individuals act so strongly 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.

§. 57. But if the example of what hath 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

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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." Garcilasso de la vega Hist. des Yncas de Peru, l. i. c. 12.

§. 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,

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 extravagant 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 it will be thought impudence, or madness, to contradict or question it. He that will impartially 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

"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 was polluted "with blood; therefore was 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 castrate 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 highest perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage-bed, as necessary thereunto.

§. 60. In confirmation of this natural authority of the father, our author brings a lame proof from the positive command of God in

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scripture his words are, "To confirm the na"tural right of regal power, we 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 66 any such ordinance in the scripture, but only "in the fatherly power; and therefore we find "the commandment, that 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 go"verning, and the person having the power, are "all the ordinances of God. The first father "had not only simply power, but power mo

narchical, 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 apocryphal words, are always left out; a great argument of our author's 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