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.