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 grandson's honouring his father, which since it is evident in common sense he cannot, it follows from hence, that "honour thy fa"ther and mother" cannot mean an absolute subjection to a sovereign power, but something else. The right therefore which parents have by nature, and which is confirmed to them by the fifth commandment, cannot be that political dominion which our author would derive from it for that being in every civil society supreme somewhere, can discharge any subject from any political obedience to any one of his fellow-subjects. But what law of the magistrate can give a child liberty not to "honour his father and mother?" It is an eternal law, annexed purely to the relation of parents and children, and so contains nothing of the magistrate's power in it, nor is subjected to it.

66

§ 65. Our author says, " God hath given to a father "a right or liberty to alien his power over his chil"dren to any other," O. 155. I doubt whether he can alien wholly the right of honour that is due from them: but be that as it will, this I am sure, he cannot alien and retain the same power. If therefore the magistrate's sovereignty be, as our author would have it,

nothing but the authority of a supreme 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 commanded chil-. dren to "honour and obey their parents," were given to such, whose fathers were under civil government, and fellow-subjects with them in political societies; and to have bid them" honour and obey their parents,"

in our author's 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 obedience, this had been to foment sedition, by setting up powers that were not. If therefore this command, "Honour thy father and mother," concern political dominion, it directly overthrows our author's monarchy: since it being to be paid by every child to his father, even in society, every father must necessarily have political dominion, and there will be as many sovereigns as there are fathers: besides that the mother too hath her title, which destroys the sovereignty of one supreme monarch. But if "Honour thy father " and mother" mean something distinct from political power, as necessarily it must, it is besides our author's business, and serves nothing to his purpose.

66

66

§ 66. "The law that enjoins obedience to kings is delivered, says our author, in the terms, Honour thy father, as if all power were originally in the father," O. 254 and that law is also delivered, say I, in the terms, "Honour thy mother," as if all power were originally in the mother. I appeal whether the argument be not as good on one side as the other, father and mother being joined all along in the Old and New Testament wherever honour or obedience is enjoined children. Again our author tells us, O. 254," that this

66

66

command, Honour thy father, gives the right to govern, and makes the form of government monarchi"cal.” To which I answer, that if by "Honour thy "father" be meant obedience to the political power of the magistrate, it concerns not any duty we owe to our natural fathers, who are subjects; because they, by our author's doctrine, are divested of all that power, it being placed wholly in the prince, and so being equally subjects and slaves with their children, can have no right, by that title, to any such honour or obedience, as contains in it political subjection: if "Honour thy "father and mother" signifies the duty we owe our natural parents, as by our Saviour's interpretation, Matt. xv. 4, and all the other mentioned places, it is plain it does; then it cannot concern political obedience, but a

duty that is owing to persons who have no title to sovereignty, nor any political authority as magistrates over subjects. For the person of a private father, and a title to obedience, due to the supreme magistrate, are things inconsistent; and therefore this command, which must necessarily comprehend the persons of natural fathers, must mean a duty we owe them distinct from our obedience to the magistrate, and from which the most absolute power of princes cannot absolve us. What this duty is, we shall in its due place examine.

$67. And thus we have at last got through all, that in our author looks like an argument for that absolute unlimited sovereignty described, sect. 8, which he supposes in Adam; so that mankind have ever since been all born slaves, without any title to freedom. But if creation, which gave nothing but a being, made not Adam prince of his posterity: if Adam, Gen. i. 28, was not constituted lord of mankind, nor had a private dominion given him exclusive of his children, but only a right and power over the earth and inferior creatures in common with the children of men; if also, Gen. iii. 16, God gave not any particular power to Adam over his wife and children, but only subjected Eve to Adam, as a punishment, or foretold the subjection of the weaker sex, in the ordering the common concernments. of their families, but gave not thereby to Adam, as to the husband, power of life and death, which necessarily belongs to the magistrate: if fathers by begetting their children acquire no such power over them; and if the command, "Honour thy father and mother," give it not, but only enjoins a duty owing to parents equally, whether subjects or not, and to the mother as well as the father if all this be so, as I think by what has been said is very evident; then man has a natural freedom, notwithstanding all our author confidently says to the contrary; since all that share in the same common nature, faculties, and powers, are in nature equal, and ought to partake in the same common rights and privileges, till the manifest appointment of God, who is

Lord over all, blessed for ever," can be produced to show any particular person's supremacy; or a man's own

consent subjects him to a superior. This is so plain, that our author confesses, that sir John Hayward, Blackwood, and Barclay, "the great vindicators of the right " of kings," could not deny it, "but admit with one "consent the natural liberty and equality of mankind," for a truth unquestionable. And our author hath been so far from producing any thing that may make good his great position, "that Adam was absolute monarch," and so "men are not naturally free," that even his own proofs make against him; so that to use his own way of arguing, "the first erroneous principle failing, the whole "fabric of this vast engine of absolute power and ty "ranny drops down of itself," and there needs no more to be said in answer to all that he builds upon so false and frail a foundation.

68. But to save others the pains, were there any need, he is not sparing himself to show, by his own, contradictions, the weakness of his own doctrine. Adam's absolute and sole dominion is that which he is every where full of, and all along builds on, and yet he tells us, p. 12, "that as Adam was lord of his children,

66

so his children under him had a command and power "over their own children." The unlimited and undivided sovereignty of Adam's fatherhood, by our author's computation, stood but a little while, only during the first generation; but as soon as he had grandchildren, sir Robert could give but a very ill account of it. "Adam, as father of his children, saith he, hath "an absolute, unlimited royal power over them, and

by virtue thereof, over those that they begot, and so "to all generations;" and yet his children, viz. Cain and Seth, have a paternal power over their children at the same time; so that they are at the same time absolute lords, and yet vassals and slaves; Adam has all the authority, as "grandfather of the people," and they have a part of it, as fathers of a part of them; he is absolute over them and their posterity, by having begotten them, and yet they are absolute over their children by the same title. "No, says our author, Adam's chil"dren under him had power over their own children,

"but still with subordination to the first parent." A good distinction that sounds well, and it is pity it signifies nothing, nor can be reconciled with our author's words. I readily grant, that supposing Adam's absolute power over his posterity, any of his children might have from him a delegated, and so a subordinate power over a part, or all the rest: but that cannot be the power our author speaks of here; it is not a power by grant and commission, but the natural paternal power he supposes a father to have over his children. For 1. he says, "As Adam was lord of his children, so his "children under him had a power over their own chil"dren:" they were then lords over their own children after the same manner, and by the same title that Adam was, i. e. by right of generation, by right of fatherhood. 2. It is plain he means the natural power of fathers, because he limits it to be only "over their own "children;" a delegated power has no such limitation as only over their own children, it might be over others, as well as their own children. 3. If it were a delegated power, it must appear in scripture; but there is no ground in scripture to affirm, that Adam's children had any other power over theirs, than what they naturally had as fathers.

§ 69. By that he means here paternal power, and no other, is past doubt, from the inference he makes in these words immediately following. "I see not then

"how the children of Adam, or of any man else, can "be free from subjection to their parents." Whereby it appears that the power on one side and the subjection on the other, our author here speaks of, is that natural power and subjection between parents and children: for that which every man's children owed could be no other; and that our author always affirms to be absolute and unlimited. This natural power of parents over their children Adam had over his posterity, says our author; and this power of parents over their children, his children had over theirs in his life-time, says our author also; so that Adam, by a natural right of father, had an absolute unlimited power over all his posterity, and