Sometimes parents have it, which word scarce signifies the father alone, p. 12, 19.
Sometimes children during their father’s lifetime, as p. 12.
Sometimes fathers of families, as p. 78, 79.
Sometimes fathers indefinitely, O. 155.
Sometimes the heir to Adam, O. 253.
Sometimes the posterity of Adam, 244, 246.
Sometimes prime fathers, all sons or grandchildren of Noah, O. 244.
Sometimes the eldest parents, p. 12.
Sometimes all kings, p. 19.
Sometimes all that have supreme power, O. 245.
Sometimes heirs to those first progenitors, who were at first the natural parents of the whole people, p. 19.
Sometimes an elective king, p. 23.
Sometimes those, whether a few or a multitude, that govern the commonwealth, p. 23.
Sometimes he that can catch it, an usurper, p. 23. O. 155.
Thus this new nothing, that is to carry with it all power, authority, and government; this fatherhood, which is to design the person, and establish the throne of monarchs, whom the people are to obey; may, according to Sir Robert, come into any hands, anyhow, and so by his politics give to democracy royal authority, and make an usurper a lawful prince. And if it will do all these fine feats, much good do our author and all his followers with their omnipotent fatherhood, which can serve for nothing but to unsettle and destroy all the lawful governments in the world, and to establish in their room disorder, tyranny, and usurpation.
VII
Of Fatherhood and Property Considered Together as Fountains of Sovereignty
In the foregoing chapters we have seen what Adam’s monarchy was, in our author’s opinion, and upon what titles he founded it. The foundations which he lays the chief stress on, as those from which he thinks he may best derive monarchical power to future princes, are two, viz. “fatherhood and property”: and therefore the way he proposes to “remove the absurdities and inconveniencies of the doctrine of natural freedom, is, to maintain the natural and private dominion of Adam,” O. 222. Conformable hereunto he tells us, the “grounds and principles of government necessarily depend upon the original of property, O. 108. The subjection of children to their parents is the fountain of all regal authority, p. 12. And all power on earth is either derived or usurped from the fatherly power, there being no other original to be found of any power whatsoever,” O. 158. I will not stand here to examine how it can be said without a contradiction, that the “first grounds and principles of government necessarily depend upon the original of property”; and yet, “that there is no other original of any power whatsoever but that of the father”: it being hard to understand how there can be “no other original but fatherhood,” and yet that the “grounds and principles of government depend upon the original of property”; property and fatherhood being as far different as lord of the manor and father of children. Nor do I see how they will either of them agree with what our author says, O. 244, of God’s sentence against Eve, Gen. 3:16, “that it is the original grant of government”: so that if that were the original, government had not its original, by our author’s own confession, either from property or fatherhood; and this text, which he brings as a proof of Adam’s power over Eve, necessarily contradicts what he says of the fatherhood, that it is the “sole fountain of all power”: for if Adam had any such regal power over Eve as our author contends for, it must be by some other title than that of begetting.
But I leave him to reconcile these contradictions, as well as many others, which may plentifully be found in him by anyone, who will but read him with a little attention; and shall come now to consider, how these two originals of government, “Adam’s natural and private dominion,” will consist and serve to make out and establish the titles of succeeding monarchs, who, as our author obliges them, must all derive their power from these fountains. Let us then suppose Adam made, “by God’s donation,” lord and sole proprietor of the whole earth, in as large and ample a manner as Sir Robert could wish; let us suppose him also, “by right of fatherhood,” absolute ruler over his children with an unlimited supremacy; I ask then, upon Adam’s death, what becomes of both his natural and private dominion? and I doubt not it will be answered, that they descended to his next heir, as our author tells us in several places. But this way, it is plain, cannot possibly convey both his natural and private dominion to the same person: for should we allow that all the property, all the estate of the father, ought to descend to the eldest son (which will need some proof to establish it), and so he has by that title all the private dominion of the father, yet the father’s natural dominion, the paternal power, cannot descend to him by inheritance: for it being a right that accrues to a man only by begetting, no man can have this natural dominion over anyone he does not beget; unless it can be supposed, that a man can have a right to anything, without doing that upon which that right is solely founded: for if a father by begetting, and no other title, has natural dominion over his children, he that does not beget them cannot have this natural dominion over them; and therefore be it true or false, that our author says, O. 156, That “every man that is born, by his very birth, becomes a subject to him that begets him,” this necessarily follows, viz. That a man by his birth cannot become a subject to his brother, who did not beget him; unless it can be supposed that a man by the very same title can come to be under the “natural and
