Two Treatises of Government

be king, he intended that the issue also should have benefit thereof, as being comprehended sufficiently in the person of the father, although the father was only named in the grant.” This yet will not help out succession: for if, as our author says, the benefit of the grant be intended to the issue of the grantee, this will not direct the succession; since, if God give anything to a man and his issue in general, the claim cannot be to any one of that issue in particular; everyone that is of his race will have an equal right. If it be said, our author meant heir, I believe our author was as willing as anybody to have used that word, if it would have served his turn: but Solomon who succeeded David in the throne, being no more his heir than Jeroboam, who succeeded him in the government of the ten tribes, was his issue, our author had reason to avoid saying, that God intended it to the heirs, when that would not hold in a succession, which our author could not except against; and so he has left his succession as undetermined, as if he had said nothing about it: for if the regal power be given by God to a man and his issue, as the land of Canaan was to Abraham and his seed, must they not all have a title to it, all share in it? And one may as well say; that by God’s grant to Abraham and his seed, the land of Canaan was to belong only to one of his seed exclusive of all others, as by God’s grant of dominion to a man and his issue, this dominion was to belong in peculiar to one of his issue exclusive of all others.

But how will our author prove that whensoever God made choice of any special person to be a king, he intended that “the (I suppose he means his) issue also should have benefit thereof?” has he so soon forgot Moses and Joshua, whom in this very section, he says, “God out of a special care chose to govern as princes,” and the judges that God raised up? Had not these princes, having the same authority of the supreme fatherhood, the same power that the kings had; and being specially chosen by God himself, should not their issue have the benefit of that choice as well as David’s or Solomon’s? If these had the paternal authority put into their hands immediately by God, why had not their issue the benefit of this grant in a succession to this power? Or if they had it as Adam’s heirs, why did not their heirs enjoy it after them by right descending to them? for they could not be heirs to one another. Was the power the same, and from the same original, in Moses, Joshua, and the Judges, as it was in David and the kings; and was it inheritable in one, and not in the other? if it was not paternal authority, then God’s own people were governed by those that had not paternal authority, and those governors did well enough without it: if it were paternal authority, and God chose the persons that were to exercise it, our author’s rule fails, that “whensoever God makes choice of any person to be supreme ruler” (for I suppose the name king has no spell in it, it is not the title, but the power makes the difference) “he intends that the issue also should have the benefit of it,” since from their coming out of Egypt to David’s time, 400 years, the issue was never “so sufficiently comprehended in the person of the father,” as that any son, after the death of his father, succeeded to the government amongst all those judges that judged Israel. If, to avoid this it be said, God always chose the person of the successor, and so, transferring the fatherly authority to him, excluded his issue from succeeding to it, that is manifestly not so in the story of Jephthah, where he articled with the people, and they made him judge over them, as is plain, Judg. 11

It is in vain then to say, that “whensoever God chooses any special person to have the exercise of paternal authority,” (for if that be not to be king I desire to know the difference between a king and one having the exercise of paternal authority) “he intends the issue also should have the benefit of it,” since we find the authority the judges had ended with them, and descended not to their issue; and if the judges had not paternal authority, I fear it will trouble our author, or any of the friends to his principles, to tell who had then the paternal authority, that is, the government and supreme power amongst the Israelites: and I suspect they must confess that the chosen people of God continued a people several hundreds of years without any knowledge or thought of this paternal authority, or any appearance of monarchical government at all.

To be satisfied of this, he need but read the story of the Levite, and the war thereupon with the Benjamites, in the three last chapters of Judges; and when he finds, that the Levite appeals to the people for justice, that it was the tribes and the congregation that debated, resolved, and directed all that was done on that occasion: he must conclude, either that God was not “careful to preserve the fatherly authority” amongst his own chosen people: or else that the fatherly authority may be preserved where there is no monarchical government; if the latter, then it will follow, that though fatherly authority be ever so well proved, yet it will not infer a necessity of monarchical government; if the former it will seem very strange and improbable, that God should ordain fatherly authority to be so sacred amongst the sons of men, that there could be no