§ 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 na↓↑ tions 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 suffi cient to establish a rule in this case, our author might have found in holy writ children sacrificed by their rents, and this amongst the people of God themselves: the Psalmist tells us, Psalm evi. 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

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the guilt of murder, as the offering them to idols had the guilt of idolatry.

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$59. Be it then, as sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men "to sell and castrate their children," O. 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 Scripture: his words are,

To confirm the 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, 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, 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 governing, and the person having the power, are all the ordi nances of God. The first father had not only simply power, but power monarchical, as he was father immediately from God," O. 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 sense of authors, they would fit to their purpose, 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 command 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 esta blishing the "monarchical power of the father," that it set up the mother equal with him, and enjoined nothing but was due in common to both father and mother: for that is the constant tenour of the Scripture, "Honour thy father and thy mother," Exod. xx. "He that smiteth his father or mother, shall surely be put to death," xxi. 15. "He that curseth 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 any 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 will not obey our voice," Deut. xxi. 18, 19, 20, 21. “Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother," xxvii. 16. 66 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 a father or a king; and yet he joins father and mother together, in all the instructions he gives children quite through his book of Proverbs. "Woe unto him, that saith unto his father, What begettest thou? or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth?" Isa. xlv. 10. "In thee have they set light by father and mother," Ezek. xxii. "And it shall come to pass, that when any shall

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yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt 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 Testament, and in the New they are likewise joined, in the obedience of their children, Eph. vi. 1. 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, as Lev. xix. 3. From which so constantly joining father and mother together, as is found quite through 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.

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§ 62. One would wonder then how our author infers from the fifth commandment, that all " power was 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 principal 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, discharge the child from paying this honour to his mother? The Scripture gaved! no such licence to the Jews, and yet there were often i

breaches wide enough betwixt husband and wife, even to divorce and separation: and, I think, nobody will say a child may withhold honour from his mother, or, as the Scripture terms it, "set light by her," though his father should command 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 sovereignty, no supremacy.

§ 63. I agree with our author that the title to this honour is vested in the parents by nature, 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 author's 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," O. 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 for, when another 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 man's 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, has also the 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 sovereignty," could discharge the grandchild from paying to his fatheri the honour due to him by the fifth commandment. If the grandfather hath, by "right of fatherhood," sole