“Chose Moses and Joshua successively to govern as princes”; a shrewd argument our author has found out to prove God’s care of the fatherly authority, and Adam’s heirs, that here, as an expression of his care of his own people, he chooses those for princes over them, that had not the least pretence to either. The persons chosen were Moses, of the tribe of Levi, and Joshua of the tribe of Ephraim, neither of which had any title of fatherhood. But, says our author, they were in the place and stead of the supreme fathers. If God had anywhere as plainly declared his choice of such fathers to be rulers, as he did of Moses and Joshua, we might believe Moses and Joshua were in their place and stead: but that being the question in debate, till that be better proved, Moses being chosen by God to be ruler of his people, will no more prove that government belonged to Adam’s heir, or to the fatherhood; than God’s choosing Aaron of the tribe of Levi to be priest, will prove that the priesthood belonged to Adam’s heir, or the prime fathers; since God would choose Aaron to be priest, and Moses ruler in Israel, though neither of those offices were settled on Adam’s heir, or the fatherhood.
Our author goes on, “And after them likewise for a time he raised up judges to defend his people in time of peril,” p. 18. This proves fatherly authority to be the original of government, and that it descended from Adam to his heirs, just as well as what went before: only here our author seems to confess, that these judges, who were all the governors they then had, were only men of valour, whom they made their generals to defend them in time of peril; and cannot God raise up such men, unless fatherhood have a title to Government?
But says our author, “when God gave the Israelites kings, he reestablished the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government.” p. 18.
How did God reestablish it? by a law, a positive command? We find no such thing. Our author means then, that when God gave them a king, in giving them a king, he reestablished the right, etc. To reestablish de facto the right of lineal succession to paternal government, is to put a man in possession of that government which his fathers did enjoy, and he by lineal succession had a right to: for, first, if it were another government than what his ancestor had, it was not succeeding to an ancient right, but beginning a new one: for if a prince should give a man, besides his ancient patrimony, which for some ages his family had been disseized of, an additional estate never before in the possession of his ancestors, he could not be said to reestablish the right of lineal succession to any more than what had been formerly enjoyed by his ancestors. If therefore the power the kings of Israel had were anything more than Isaac or Jacob had, it was not the reestablishing in them the right of succession to a power, but giving them a new power, however you please to call it, paternal or not: and whether Isaac and Jacob had the same power that the kings of Israel had, I desire anyone, by what has been above said, to consider; and I do not think he will find, that either Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, had any regal power at all.
Next, there can be “no reestablishment of the prime and ancient right of lineal succession” to anything, unless he, that is put in possession of it, has the right to succeed, and to be the true and next heir to him he succeeds to. Can that be a reestablishment, which begins in a new family? or that the “reestablishment of an ancient right of lineal succession,” when a crown is given to one, who has no right of succession to it: and who, if the lineal succession had gone on, had been out of all possibility of pretence to it? Saul, the first king God gave the Israelites, was of the tribe of Benjamin. Was the “ancient and prime right of lineal succession reestablished” in him? The next was David, the youngest son of Jesse, of the posterity of Judah, Jacob’s third son. Was the “ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government reestablished” in him? or in Solomon, his younger son and successor in the throne? or in Jeroboam over the ten tribes? or in Athaliah, a woman who reigned six years, an utter stranger to the royal blood? “If the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government were reestablished” in any of these or their posterity, “the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government” belongs to younger brothers as well as elder, and may be reestablished in any man living: for whatever younger brothers, “by ancient and prime right of lineal succession,” may have as well as the elder, that every man living may have a right to, by lineal succession, and Sir Robert, as well as any other. And so what a brave right of lineal succession, to his paternal or regal government, our author has reestablished, for the securing the rights and inheritance of crowns, where everyone may have it, let the world consider.
But says our author, however, p. 19, “Whensoever God made choice of any special person to
