H́nh ảnh trang
PDF
ePub

privileges, and grants of princes, have no force but during their life, if they be not ratified by the express consent, or by sufferance of the prince following, especially privileges, O. p. 279. The reason why laws have been also made by kings, was this: when kings were either busied with wars, or distracted with public cares, so that every private man could not have access to their persons, to learn their wills and pleasure, then were laws of necessity invented, that so every particular subject might find his prince's pleasure deciphered unto him in the tables of his laws, p. 92. In a monarchy, the king must by necessity be above the laws, p. 100. A A perfect kingdom is that, wherein the king rules all things, according to his own will, p. 100. Neither common nor statute laws are, or can be, any diminution of that general power, which kings have over their people, by right of fatherhood, p. 115. Adam was the father, king, and lord over his family; a son, a subject, and a servant or slave, were one and the same thing at first. The father had power to dispose or sell his children or servants; whence we find, that, in the first reckoning up of goods in Scripture, the man-servant and the maid-servant are numbered among the possessions and substance of the owner, as other goods were, O. pref. God also hath given to the father a right or liberty to alien his power over his children to any other; whence we find the sale and gift of children to have been much in use in the beginning of the world, when men had their servants for a possession and an inheritance, as well as other goods; whereupon we find the power of castrating and making eunuchs much in use in old times, O. p. 155. Law is nothing else but the will of him that hath the power of the supreme father, O. p. 223. It was God's ordinance that the supremacy should be unlimited in Adam, and as large as all the acts of his will; and as in him, so in all others that have supreme power," O. p. 245.

$9. I have been fain to trouble my reader with these several quotations in our A.'s own words, that in them

might be seen his own description of his fatherly authority, as it lies scattered up and down in his writings, which he supposes was first vested in Adam, and by right belongs to all princes ever since. This fatherly authority then, or right of fatherhood, in our A.'s sense, is a divine unalterable right of sovereignty, whereby a father or a prince hath an absolute, arbitrary, unlimited, and unlimitable power over the lives, liberties, and estates of his children and subjects; so that he may take or alienate their estates, sell, castrate, or use their persons as he pleases, they being all his slaves, and he lord or proprietor of every thing, and his unbounded will their law.

§ 10. Our A. having placed such a mighty power in Adam, and upon that supposition founded all government and all power of princes, it is reasonable to expect that he should have proved this with arguments clear and evident, suitable to the weightiness of the cause. That since men had nothing else left them, they might in slavery have such undeniable proofs of its necessity, that their consciences might be convinced, and oblige them to submit peaceably to that absolute dominion, which their governors had a right to exercise over them. Without this, what good could our A. do, or pretend to do, by erecting such an unlimited power, but flatter the natural vanity and ambition of men, too apt of itself to grow and increase with the possession of any power? And by persuading those, who, by the consent of their fellow-men, are advanced to great but limited degrees of it, that by that part which is given them, they have a right to all that was not so; and therefore may do what they please, because they have authority to do more than others, and so tempt them to do what is neither for their own, nor the good of those under their care; whereby great mischiefs cannot but follow.

§ 11. The sovereignty of Adam being that on which, as a sure basis, our A. builds his mighty absolute monarchy, I expected, that, in his Patriarcha, this his main supposition would have been proved and established with all that evidence of arguments that such a

fundamental tenet required; and that this, on which the great stress of the business depends, would have been made out, with reasons sufficient to justify the confidence with which it was assumed. But, in all that treatise, I could find very little tending that way; the thing is there so taken for granted, without proof, that I could scarce believe myself, when, upon attentive reading that treatise, I found there so mighty a structure raised upon the bare supposition of this foundation. For it is scarce credible, that in a discourse, where he pretends to confute the erroneous principle of man's natural freedom, he should do it by a bare supposition of Adam's authority, without, offering any proof for that authority. Indeed, he confidently says, that Adam had "royal authority, p. 12 and 13. Absolute lordship and dominion of life and death, p. 13. An universal monarchy, p. 33. Absolute power of life and death," p. 35. He is very frequent in such assertions; but, what is strange, in all his whole Patriarcha, I find not one pretence of a reason to establish this his great foundation of government; not any thing that looks like an argument, but these words: "To confirm this natural 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; as if all power were originally in the father." And why may I not add as well, that in the decalogue the law that enjoins obedience to queens, is delivered in the terms of " Honour thy mother," as if all power were originally in the mother? The argument, as sir Robert puts it, will hold as well for one as the other; but of this more in its due place.

§ 12. All that I take notice of here is, that this is all our A. says, in this first, or any of the following chapters, to prove the absolute power of Adam, which is his great principle: and yet, as if he had there settled it upon sure demonstration, he begins his second chapter with these words, " By conferring these proofs and reasons, drawn from the authority of the Scripture." Where those proofs and reasons for Adam's sovereignty are, bating that of Honour thy father,

above-mentioned, I confess, I cannot find; unless what he says, p. 11, "In these words we have an evident confession," viz. of Bellarmine, "that creation made man prince of his posterity," must be taken for proofs and reasons drawn from Scripture, or for any sort of proof at all: though from thence, by a new way of inference, in the words immediately following, he concludes the royal authority of Adam sufficiently settled in him.

§ 13. If he has in that chapter, or any where in the whole treatise, given any other proofs of Adam's royal authority, other than by often repeating it, which, among some men, goes for argument, I desire any body for him to show me the place and page, that I may be convinced of my mistake, and acknowledge my oversight. If no such arguments are to be found, I beseech those men, who have so much cried up this book, to consider, whether they do not give the world cause to suspect, that it is not the force of reason and argument that makes them for absolute monarchy, but some other by interest, and therefore are resolved. to applaud any author that writes in favour of this doctrine, whether ༠ ས་ he support it with reason or no. But I hope they do not expect, that rational and indifferent men should be brought over to their opinion, because this their great doctor of it, in a discourse made on purpose to set up the absolute monarchical power of Adam, in opposition to the natural freedom of mankind, has said so little to prove it, from whence it is rather naturally to be concluded, that there is little to be said.

§ 14. But that I might omit no care to inform myself in our author's full sense, I consulted his Observations on Aristotle, Hobbes, &c. to see whether in disputing with others he made use of any arguments for this his darling tenet of Adam's sovereignty; since in his treatise of the Natural Power of Kings, he hath been so sparing of them. In his Observations on Mr. Hobbes's Leviathan, I think he has put, in short, all those arguments for it together, which in his writings I find him any where to make use of: his words are these: "If God created only Adam, and of a piece of

him made the woman, and if by generation from them two, as parts of them, all mankind be propagated if also God gave to Adam not only the dominion over the woman and the children that should issue from them, but also over all the earth to subdue it, and over all the creatures on it, so that, as long as Adam lived, no man could claim or enjoy any thing but by donation, assignation, or permission from him, I wonder," &c. Obs. 165. Here we have the sum of all his arguments, for Adam's sovereignty, and against natural freedom, which I find up and down in his other treatises and they are these following; "God's creation of Adam, the dominion he gave him over Eve, and the dominion he had as father over his children;" all which I shall particularly consider.

CHAPTER III.

Of Adam's Title to Sovereignty by Creation.

§ 15. SIR Robert, in his preface to his Observations on Aristotle's Politics, tells us, "A natural freedom of mankind cannot be supposed, without the denial of the creation of Adam:" but how Adam's being created, which was nothing but his receiving a being, immediately from Omnipotency, and the hand of God, gave Adam a sovereignty over any thing, I cannot see; nor consequently understand, how a supposition of natural freedom is a denial of Adam's creation; and would be glad any body else (since our A. did not vouchsafe us the favour) would make it out for him. For I find no difficulty to suppose the freedom of mankind, though I have always believed the creation of Adam. He was created, or began to exist, by God's immediate power, without the intervention of parents, or the pre-existence of any of the same species to beget him, when it pleased God he should; and so

« TrướcTiếp tục »