Derecho

PATRIARCHA 
OR THE 
NATURAL POWER OF KINGS 
By 
THE LEARNED SIR ROBERT FILMER, BART.
[1680]
Libertas .... populi, quem regna coercent Libertate perit .... — Lucan, Lib. iii.
Fallitur egregio quisquis sub principe credit Servitium; nunquam libertas gratior extat Quam sub Rege pio .... — Claudian.
CHAPTER I 
THAT THE FIRST KINGS WERE FATHERS OF FAMILIES
1. SINCE the time that schooldivinity 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."
Thistenet 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 ofhuman 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 ancientmonarchies, 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 aremade 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, andbravely 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 downof 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 tomeddle 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...