the times.  It is necessary those men, who taking on them to be 
teachers, have so dangerously misled others, should  be  openly  
shewed  of  what authority this their Patriarch is, whom they 
have so blindly followed, that so they may either retract what 
upon so ill grounds they have vented, and cannot be maintained; 
or else justify those principles which they preached up for 
gospel; though they had no better an author than an English 
courtier: for I should not have writ against Sir Robert, or taken 
the pains to shew his mistakes, inconsistencies, and want of 
(what he so much boasts of, and pretends wholly to build on) 
scripture-proofs, were there not men amongst us, who, by crying 
up his books, and espousing his doctrine, save me from the 
reproach of writing against a dead adversary.  They have been so 
zealous in this point, that, if I have done him any wrong, I 
cannot hope they should spare me.  I wish, where they have done 
the truth and the public wrong, they would be as ready to redress 
it, and allow its just weight to this reflection, viz. that there 
cannot be done a greater mischief to prince and people, than the 
propagating wrong notions concerning government; that so at last 
all times might not have reason to complain of the Drum 
Ecclesiastic.  If any one, concerned really for truth, undertake 
the confutation of my Hypothesis, I promise him either to recant  
my mistake, upon fair conviction; or to answer his difficulties.  
But he must remember two things.

     First, That cavilling here and there, at some expression, or 
little incident of my discourse, is not an answer to my book.

     Secondly, That I shall not take railing for arguments, nor 
think either of these worth my notice, though I shall always look 
on myself as bound to give satisfaction to any one, who shall 
appear to be conscientiously scrupulous in the point, and shall 
shew any just grounds for his scruples.

     I have nothing more, but to advertise the reader, that 
Observations stands for Observations on Hobbs, Milton, &c. and 
that a bare quotation of pages always means pages of his 
Patriarcha, Edition 1680.

                        OF CIVIL-GOVERNMENT

                             Book II

Chap. I. Sect. 1. It having been shewn in the foregoing 
discourse,

     1. That Adam had not, either by natural right of 
fatherhood, or by positive donation from God, any  such  
authority  over  his children, or dominion over the world, as is 
pretended:

     2. That if he had, his heirs, yet, had no right to it:

     3. That if his heirs had, there being no law of nature nor 
positive law of God that determines which is the right heir in 
all cases that may arise, the right of succession, and 
consequently of bearing rule, could not have been certainly 
determined:

     4. That if even that had been determined, yet the knowledge 
of which is the eldest line of Adam's posterity, being so long 
since utterly lost, that in the races of mankind and families of 
the world, there remains not to one above another, the least 
pretence to be the eldest house, and to have the right of 
inheritance:

    All these premises having, as I think, been clearly made out, 
it is impossible that the rulers now on earth should make any 
benefit, or derive any the least shadow of authority from that, 
which is held to be the fountain of all power, Adam's private 
dominion and paternal jurisdiction; so that he that will not 
give just occasion to think that all government in the world is 
the product only of force and violence, and that men live 
together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the 
strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual 
disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition and rebellion, (things 
that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against) 
must of necessity find out another rise of government, another 
original of political power, and another way of designing and 
knowing the persons that have it, than what Sir Robert Filmer 
hath taught us.

     Sect. 2. To this purpose, I think it may not be amiss, to 
set down what I take to be political power; that the power of a 
MAGISTRATE over a subject may be distinguished from that of a 
FATHER over his children, a MASTER over his servant, a HUSBAND 
over his wife, and a LORD over his slave.  All which distinct 
powers happening sometimes together in the same man, if he be 
considered under these different relations, it may help us to 
distinguish these powers one from wealth, a father of a family, 
and a captain of a galley.

     Sect. 3. POLITICAL POWER, then, I take to be a RIGHT of 
making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less 
penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of 
employing the force of the community, in the execution of such 
laws, and in the defence of the common-wealth from foreign 
injury; and all this only for the public good.

                           C H A P. I I.