Two Treatises of Government

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 children”: 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.

But 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 lifetime, says our author also; so that Adam, by a natural right of father, had an absolute unlimited power over all his posterity, and at the same time his children had by the same right absolute unlimited power over theirs. Here then are two absolute unlimited powers existing together, which I would have anybody reconcile one to another, or to common sense. For the salvo he has put in of subordination makes it more absurd: to have one absolute, unlimited, nay unlimitable power in subordination to another, is so manifest a contradiction, that nothing can be more. “Adam is absolute prince with the unlimited authority of fatherhood over all his posterity”; all his posterity are then absolutely his subjects; and, as our author says, his slaves, children, and grandchildren, are equally in this state of subjection and slavery; and yet, says our author, “the children of Adam have paternal, i.e. absolute unlimited power over their own children”: which in plain English is, they are slaves and absolute princes at the same time, and in the same government; and one part of the subjects have an absolute unlimited power over the other by the natural right of parentage.

If anyone will suppose, in favour of our author, that he here meant, that parents, who are in subjection themselves to the absolute authority of their father, have yet some power over their children: I confess he is something nearer the truth: but he will not at all hereby help our author; for he nowhere speaking of the paternal power, but as an absolute unlimited authority, cannot be supposed to understand anything else here, unless he himself had limited it, and showed how far it reached; and that he means here paternal authority in that large extent, is plain from the immediately following words: “This subjection of children being, says he, the foundation of all regal authority,” p. 12. The subjection then that in the former line, he says, “every man is in to his parents,” and consequently what Adam’s grandchildren were in to their parents, was that which was the fountain of all regal authority, i.e. according to our author, absolute unlimitable authority. And thus Adam’s children had regal authority over their children, whilst they themselves were subjects to their father, and fellow-subjects with their children. But let him mean as he pleases, it is plain he allows “Adam’s children to have paternal power,” p. 12, as also all other fathers to have “paternal power over their children,” O. 156. From whence one of these two things will necessarily follow, that either Adam’s children, even in his lifetime, had, and so all other fathers have, as he phrases it, p. 12, “by right of fatherhood, royal authority over their children,” or else that Adam, “by right of fatherhood, had not royal authority.” For it cannot be but that paternal power does, or does not, give royal authority to them that have it: if it does not, then Adam could not be sovereign by this title, nor anybody else; and then there is an end of all our author’s politics at once: if it does give royal authority, then everyone that has paternal power has royal authority; and then, by our author’s patriarchal government, there will be as many kings as there are fathers.

And thus what a monarchy he hath set up, let him and his disciples consider. Princes certainly will have great reason to thank him for these new politics, which set up as many absolute kings in every country as there are fathers of children. And yet who can blame our author for it, it lying unavoidably in the way of one discoursing upon our author’s principles? For having placed an “absolute power in fathers by right of begetting,” he could not easily resolve how much of this power belonged to a son over the children he had begotten: and so it fell out to be a very hard matter to give all the power, as he does, to Adam, and yet allow a part in his lifetime to his children when they were parents, and which he knew not well how to deny them. This makes him so doubtful in his expressions, and so uncertain where to place this absolute natural power, which he calls fatherhood. Sometimes Adam alone has it