(who can never be supposed to consent that any
body should rule over them for their harm) do that which they have not a
right to do. And where the body of the people, or any single man, is
deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without
right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal
to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And
therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the
constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give
effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and
paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate
determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there
lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to
make their appeal to heaven. And this judgment they cannot part with, it
being out of a man's power so to submit himself to another, as to give
him a liberty to destroy him; God and nature never allowing a man so to
abandon himself, as to neglect his own preservation: and since he cannot
take away his own life, neither can he give another power to take it.
Nor let any one think, this lays a perpetual foundation for disorder;
for this operates not, till the inconveniency is so great, that the
majority feel it, and are weary of it, and find a necessity to have it
amended. But this the executive power, or wise princes, never need come
in the danger of: and it is the thing, of all others, they have most
need to avoid, as of all others the most perilous.

CHAPTER. XV.

OF PATERNAL, POLITICAL, AND DESPOTICAL POWER, CONSIDERED TOGETHER.

Sect. 169. THOUGH I have had occasion to speak of these separately
before, yet the great mistakes of late about government, having, as I
suppose, arisen from confounding these distinct powers one with another,
it may not, perhaps, be amiss to consider them here together.

Sect. 170. First, then, Paternal or parental power is nothing but that
which parents have over their children, to govern them for the
children's good, till they come to the use of reason, or a state of
knowledge, wherein they may be supposed capable to understand that rule,
whether it be the law of nature, or the municipal law of their country,
they are to govern themselves by: capable, I say, to know it, as well as
several others, who live as freemen under that law. The affection and
tenderness which God hath planted