cob
of Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse nor Solomon of David
Nor does the system of Filmer receive any countenance from those
passages of the New Testament which describe government as an ordinance
of God: for the government under which the writers of the New Testament
lived was not a hereditary monarchy. The Roman Emperors were republican
magistrates, named by the senate. None of them pretended to rule by
right of birth; and, in fact, both Tiberius, to whom Christ commanded
that tribute should be given, and Nero, whom Paul directed the Romans to
obey, were, according to the patriarchal theory of government, usurpers.
In the middle ages the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right would
have been regarded as heretical: for it was altogether incompatible with
the high pretensions of the Church of Rome. It was a doctrine unknown
to the founders of the Church of England. The Homily on Wilful Rebellion
had strongly, and indeed too strongly, inculcated submission to
constituted authority, but had made no distinction between hereditary
end elective monarchies, or between monarchies and republics. Indeed
most of the predecessors of James would, from personal motives, have
regarded the patriarchal theory of government with aversion. William
Rufus, Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry the Fourth, Henry the
Fifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third, and Henry the Seventh, had
all reigned in defiance of the strict rule of descent. A grave
doubt hung over the legitimacy both of Mary and of Elizabeth. It was
impossible that both Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could have been
lawfully married to Henry the Eighth; and the highest authority in
the realm had pronounced that neither was so. The Tudors, far from
considering the law of succession as a divine and unchangeable
institution, were constantly tampering with it. Henry the Eighth
obtained an act of parliament, giving him power to leave the crown by
will, and actually made a will to the prejudice of the royal family
of Scotland. Edward the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a
similar power, with the full approbation of the most eminent Reformers.
Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to grave objection, and
unwilling to admit even a reversionary right in her rival and enemy
the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament to pass a law, enacting that
whoever should deny the competency of the reigning sovereign, with the
assent of the Estates of the r