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; 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