undo and re-shape it. Hobbes said that the authority when once established became absolute. There was no power to take back what was given. Absolute government was the form thus established; and this form was best. Especially in his “Leviathan,” first published under the Commonwealth, in 1651, Hobbes set forth his view of "the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil." The State was a great body politic, as Leviathan was a great body natural, and the body politic, like the body natural, could be well ruled only when all members were subject to the control of a single head. In the Church as in the State, according to Hobbes, there should be one directing will, and that the King's. It was for the King to say what doctrines are fit for peace and to be taught the subject.

Sir Robert Filmer was among Royalists of the time of Charles I., who held that Hobbes had conceded too much when he based his theory of absolute sovereignty upon a social compact among men equal by nature. There never was a time, said Filmer, when men were equal. When there were only two in the world, one was the master. When children were born, Adam was master over them. Authority was founded by God Himself in Fatherhood. Out of Fatherhood came Royalty, the Patriarch was King. Sir Robert Filmer wrote several political pieces that were published in the reign of Charles I. One of them boldly asserted that Parliament was an evil; they all maintained extreme views of the irresponsibility of kings. Filmer sought for his views the authority of Aristotle, in his "Observations upon Aristotle's Politics." But Aristotle based his teaching on the various conditions of the little States of Greece-accepted actual conditions that are not repeated in the modern States of Europe-built his arguments upon acceptance of a form of citizenship that included slave labour as a means of giving leisure for the cultivation of free citizens. Filmer died in 1653, leaving treatises unprinted, of which two were published by his son when the contest about the limit of authority became keener as the combatants drew nearer to the crisis of the Revolution. The more important of these was the “Patriarcha,” first published in 1680. It was an attempt at the full statement of his argument. Much of the hottest battle of opinion was along its lines. Therefore, when Locke endeavoured, immediately after the Revolution, to show what were the foundations of Civil Government, he began by sweeping off the fallacies with which they had been overlaid. He disposed, in his first essay, of the speculation of Sir Robert Filmer, and showed what are not the foundations of Civil Authority, and, in his second essay, he then endeavoured to show what they are. For the better understanding and enjoyment of Locke's "Two Treatises of Civil Government,' they are here preceded by the "Patriarcha.”

January, 1884.

H. M.

PATRIARCHA.

CHAPTER I.

That the first Kings were Fathers of Families.

SINCE the time that school divinity began to flourish there hath been a common opinion maintained, as well by divines as by divers other learned men, which affirms,—

"Mankind is naturally endowed and born with freedom from all subjection, and at liberty to choose what form of government it please, and that the power which any one man hath over others was at first bestowed according to the discretion of the multitude."

This tenet was first hatched in the schools, and hath been fostered by all succeeding Papists for good divinity. The divines, also, of the Reformed Churches have entertained it, and the common people everywhere tenderly embrace it as being most plausible to flesh and blood, for that it prodigally distributes a portion of liberty to the meanest of the multitude, who magnify liberty as if the height of human felicity were only to be found in it, never remembering that the desire of liberty was the first cause of the fall of Adam.

But howsoever this vulgar opinion hath of late obtained a great reputation, yet it is not to be found in the ancient fathers and doctors of the primitive Church. It contradicts the doctrine and history of the Holy Scriptures, the constant practice of all ancient monarchies, and the very principles of the law of nature. It is hard to say whether it be more erroneous in divinity or dangerous in policy.

Yet upon the ground of this doctrine, both Jesuits and some other zealous favourers of the Geneva discipline have

built a perilous conclusion, which is, that the people or multitude have power to punish or deprive the prince if he transgress the laws of the kingdom; witness Parsons and Buchanan; the first, under the name of Dolman, in the third chapter of his first book, labours to prove that kings have been lawfully chastised by their commonwealths. The latter, in his book "De jure Regni apud Scotos," maintains a liberty of the people to depose their prince. Cardinal Bellarmine and Calvin both look asquint this way.

This desperate assertion whereby kings are made subject to the censures and deprivations of their subjects follows (as the authors of it conceive) as a necessary consequence of that former position of the supposed natural equality and freedom of mankind, and liberty to choose what form of government it please.

And though Sir John Heywood, Adam Blackwood, John Barclay, and some others have learnedly confuted both Buchanan and Parsons, and bravely vindicated the right of kings in most points, yet all of them, when they come to the argument drawn from the natural liberty and equality of mankind, do with one consent admit it for a truth unquestionable, not so much as once denying or opposing it, whereas if they did but confute this first erroneous principle the whole fabric of this vast engine of popular sedition would drop down of itself.

The rebellious consequence which follows this prime article of the natural freedom of mankind may be my sufficient warrant for a modest examination of the original truth of it; much hath been said, and by many, for the affirmative; equity requires that an ear be reserved a little for the negative.

In this discourse I shall give myself these cautions :

First, I have nothing to do to meddle with mysteries of state, such arcana imperii, or cabinet councils, the vulgar may not pry into. An implicit faith is given to the meanest artificer in his own craft; how much more is it, then, due to a prince in the profound secrets of government, the causes and ends of the greatest politic actions and motions of state dazzle the eyes and exceed the capacities of all men, save only those that are hourly versed in the managing public affairs: yet since the rule for each man to know in