been common and free at the first, and so continued for many hundreds of years after the flood, it was afterwards abolished, and a new one introduced. He that asserts this must prove it: but till it does appear to us; when, where, how, and by whom this was done, we may safely believe there is no such thing; and that no man is or can be a lord amongst us, till we make him so; and that by nature we are all brethren.

Our author, by endeavouring farther to illustrate the patriarchal power, destroys it, and cannot deny to any man the right which he acknowledges to have been in Ishmael and Esau. But if every man hath a right of setting up for himself with his family, or before he has any, he cannot but have a right of joining with others if he pleases. (As his joining or not joining with others, and the choice of those others, depends upon his own will, he cannot but have a right of judging upon what conditions it is good for him to enter into such a society, as must necessarily hinder him from exercising the right which he has originally in himself. But as it cannot be imagined, that men should generally put such fetters upon themselves, unless it were in expectation of a greater good that was thereby to accrue to them, no more can be required to prove, that they do voluntarily enter into these societies, institute them for their own good, and prescribe such rules and forms to them as best please themselves, without giving account to any. But if every man be free till he enter into such a society as he chuseth for his own good, and those

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societies may regulate themselves as they think fit, no more can be required to prove the natural equality in which all men are born, and continue, till they resign it as into a common stock, in such measure as they think fit for the constituting of societies for their own good, which I assert, and our author denies.

SECTION XII.

THERE WAS NO SHADOW OF A PATERNAL KING

DOM AMONGST THE HEBREWS, NOR PRECEPT FOR IT.

OUR author is so modest to confess, that Jacob's kingdom, consisting of seventy-two persons, was swallowed up by the power of the greater monarch Pharaoh but if this was an act of tyranny, it is strange that the sacred and eternal right, grounded upon the immutable laws of God and nature, should not be restored to God's chosen people, when he delivered them from that tyranny. Why was not Jacob's monarchy conferred upon his right heir? How came the people to neglect a point of such importance? Or if they did forget it, why did not Moses put them in mind of it? Why did not Jacob declare to whom it did belong? Or if he is understood to have declared it, in saying the sceptre should not depart from Judah, why was it not delivered

into his hands, or into his heirs? If he was hard to be found in a people of one kindred, but four degrees removed from Jacob their head, who were exact in observing genealogies, how can we hope to find him after so many thousand years, when we do not so much as know from whom we are derived? or rather how comes that right, which is eternal and universal, to have been nipped in the bud, and so abolished before it could take any effect in the world, as never to have been heard of amongst the Gentiles, nor the people of God, either before or after the captivity, from the death of Jacob to this day; this I assert, and I give up the cause, if I do not prove it. To this end I begin with Moses and Aaron, the first rulers of the people, who were neither of the eldest tribe according to birth, nor the disposition of Jacob, if he did, or could given it to any; nor were they of the eldest line of their own tribe; and even between them the superiority was given to Moses, who was the younger, as it is said, "I have made thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet." If Moses was a king, as our author says, but I deny, and shall hereafter prove, the matter is worse: he must have been an usurper of a most unjust dominion over his brethren; and this patriarchal power, which by the law of God was to be perpetually fixed in his descendants, perished with him, and his sons continued in an obscure rank amongst the Levites. Joshua of the tribe of Ephraim succeeded him; Othniel was of Judah, Ehud of Benjamin, Barak of Nap.

thalim, and and Gideon of Manasseh. The other judges were of several tribes; and they being dead, their children lay hid amongst the common people, and we hear no more of them. The first king was taken out of the least family of the least and youngest tribe. The second, whilst the children of the first king were yet alive, was the youngest of eight sons of an obscure man in the tribe of Judah: Solomon, one of his youngest sons, succeeded him: ten tribes deserted Rehoboam, and by the command of God set up Jeroboam to be their king. The kingdom of Israel, by the destruction of one family, passed into another: that of Judah by God's peculiar promise continued in David's race till the captivity; but we know not that the eldest son was ever preferred, and have no reason to promise it. David, their most reverenced king, left no precept for it, and gave an example to the contrary : he did not set up the eldest, but the wisest. After the captivity they who had most wisdom or valour to defend the people, were thought most fit to command; and the kingdom at the last came to the Asmonean race, whilst the posterity of David was buried in the mass of the common people, and utterly deprived of all worldly rule or glory. If the judges had not a regal power, or the regal were only just as instituted by God, and eternally annexed to paternity, all that they did was evil : there could be nothing of justice in the powers exercised by Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, and the rest of the judges. If the power was regal and just, it must have continued in the descendants of the first:

Saul, David, and Solomon could never have been kings; the right failing in them, their descendants could inherit none from them; and the others after the captivity were guilty of the like injustice.

Now as the rule is not general, to which there is any one just exception, there is not one of these examples that would not overthrow our author's doctrine if one deviation from it were lawful, another might be, and so to infinity. But the utmost degree of impudent madness to which perhaps any man in the world hath ever arrived, is to assert that to be universal and perpetual, which cannot be verified by any one example to have been in any place of the world, nor justified by any precept.

If it be objected, that all these things were done by God's immediate disposition: I answer, that it were an impious madness to believe, that God did perpetually send his prophets to overthrow what he had ordained from the beginning, and as it were in spite to bring the minds of men into extricable confusion and darkness; and by particular commands to overthrow his universal and eternal law. But to render this point more clear, I desire it may be considered, that we have but three ways of distinguishing between good and evil :

I. When God by his word reveals it to us.

II. When by his deeds he declareth it: because that which he does is good, as that which he says is true.