By whom this doctrine came at first to be broached, and brought in fashion amongst us, and what sad effects it gave rise to, I leave to historians to relate, or to the memory of those who were contemporaries with Sibthorp and Manwaring, to recollect. My business at present is only to consider what Sir Robert Filmer, who is allowed to have carried this argument farthest, and is supposed to have brought it to perfection, has said in it: for from him everyone, who would be as fashionable as French was at court, has learned, and runs away with this short system of politics, viz. “Men are not born free, and therefore could never have the liberty to choose either governors, or forms of government.” Princes have their power absolute, and by divine right; for slaves could never have a right to compact or consent. Adam was an absolute monarch, and so are all princes ever since.
II
Of Paternal and Regal Power
Sir Robert Filmer’s great position is, that “men are not naturally free.” This is the foundation on which his absolute monarchy stands, and from which it erects itself to an height, that its power is above every power: caput inter nubila, so high above all earthly and human things, that thought can scarce reach it; that promises and oaths, which tie the infinite Deity, cannot confine it. But if this foundation fails, all his fabric falls with it, and governments must be left again to the old way of being made by contrivance, and the consent of men (Ἀνθρωπίνη κτίσις) making use of their reason to unite together into society. To prove this grand position of his, he tells us, p. 12, “Men are born in subjection to their parents,” and therefore cannot be free. And this authority of parents he calls “royal authority,” p. 12, 14, “fatherly authority, right of fatherhood,” p. 12, 20. One would have thought he would, in the beginning of such a work as this, on which was to depend the authority of princes, and the obedience of subjects, have told us expressly what that fatherly authority is, have defined it, though not limited it, because in some other treatises of his, he tells us, it is unlimited, and unlimitable;1 he should at least have given us such an account of it, that we might have had an entire notion of this fatherhood, or fatherly authority, whenever it came in our way, in his writings: this I expected to have found in the first chapter of his Patriarcha. But instead thereof, having, 1. En passant, made his obeisance to the arcana imperii, p. 5. 2. Made his compliment to the “rights and liberties of this, or any other nation,” p. 6, which he is going presently to null and destroy; and 3. Made his leg to those learned men, who did not see so far into the matter as himself, p. 7. He comes to fall on Bellarmine, p. 8, and by a victory over him, establishes his fatherly authority beyond any question. Bellarmine being routed by his own confession, p. 11, the day is clear got, and there is no more need of any forces: for, having done that, I observe not that he states the question, or rallies up any arguments to make good his opinion, but rather tells us the story, as he thinks fit, of this strange kind of domineering phantom, called the fatherhood, which whoever could catch, presently got empire, and unlimited, absolute power. He acquaints us how this fatherhood began in Adam, continued its course, and kept the world in order all the time of the patriarchs, till the flood; got out of the ark with Noah and his sons, made and supported all the kings of the earth, till the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt; and then the poor fatherhood was under hatches, till “God, by giving the Israelites kings, reestablished the ancient and prime right of the lineal succession in paternal government.” This is his business from p. 12 to 19. And then, obviating an objection, and clearing a difficulty or two with one half reason, p. 23, “to confirm the natural right of regal power,” he ends the first chapter. I hope it is no injury to call an half quotation an half reason; for God says, “Honour thy father and mother”; but our author contents himself with half, leaves out “thy mother” quite, as little serviceable to his purpose. But of that more in another place.
I do not think our author so little skilled in the way of writing discourses of this nature, nor so careless of the point in hand, that he by oversight commits the fault, that he himself, in his “anarchy of a mixed monarchy,” p. 239, objects to Mr. Hunton in these words: “Where first I charge the A. that he hath not given us any definition or description of monarchy in general; for by the rules of method he should have first defined.” And by the like rule of method, Sir Robert should have told us, what his fatherhood, or fatherly authority is, before he had told us in whom it was to be found, and talked so much of it. But, perhaps, Sir Robert found, that this fatherly authority, this power of fathers, and of kings, for he makes them both the same, p.
