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THE POLITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN: emphasising popular consent as the foundation and ordination of civil government. “The King” states Parker, “attributeth the originall of his royalty to God, and the Law, making no mention of the graunt, consent, or trust of man therein.” On the contrary, “God is no more the author of Regall, then of Aristocraticall power, nor of supreame, then of subordinate command.” 39 Parker asserts that “power is originally inherent in the people, and it is nothing else but that might and vigour which such or such a societie of men containes in it selfe.” A prince’s “power is but secondary and derivative,” while “the fountaine and efficient cause is the people.” 40 The end and purpose of civil government explains Parker is not for the preservation of a king’s interests, but “the safetie of the people” which “is to bee valued above any right of his, as much as the end is to bee preferred before the meanes.” It is contrary to a policy of justice “for any nation so to inslave it selfe, and to resigne its owne interest to the will of one Lord” such “that that Lord may destroy it without injury, and yet to have not right to preserve it selfe.” It is unnatural and “felonious” for a people to “contract to obay to their owne ruine” or “esteeme such a contract before their owne preservation.” 41 Parker argues that man’s depravity is the origin of civil authority, not Adam’s unique creation as Royalists would contend. Government was necessary because “man being depraved by the fall of Adam grew so untame and uncivill a creature, that the Law of God written in his brest was not sufficient to restrayne him from mischiefe, or to make him sociable.” 42 Civil government arose out of the necessity to restrain human depravity and sin while popular consent was fundamental for its institutionalisation. Consent was also conditional; it could be revoked, and resistance justified if a king turned tyrant, as his power was derivative, not original, and limited in service to the people. Parker did not infer a civil relationship from family relationships, though he recognised a wife’s role to her husband as submissive and supportive. Civil government, especially monarchy, did not resemble or embody the same relational particulars or duties by way of analogy or similitude with other classes of human relations, especially marriage. Though “the wife is inferiour in nature, and was created for the assistance of man, and servants are hired for their Lords meere attendance; but it is otherwise in the State betwixt man and man.” As Parker notes, this represents a “civill difference which is for civill ends, and those ends are, that wrong and violence may be repressed by one for the good of all not that servilitie and drudgerie may be imposed upon all, for the pomp of one.” 43 Royalists attacked each of Parker’s arguments, and patriarchy along with paternal authority was their most potent polemic. Patriarchal Hermeneutics: From Paternal Authority to Regal Authority Royalist responses were immediately underway with the anonymous publication of Parker’s Observations in 1642, which mockingly referred to him as the “Observator” and “Privado.” The immediate context for their heated polemic was the lawfulness of Parliament’s resistance to King Charles I by force of arms; Parliament, as the peoples’ representative, positioned itself as a lower magistrate warring against the tyranny of the King. To defeat this Parliamentary position, Royalists employed a patriarchal hermeneutic by reading a political primacy into Adams creation, and doing so by drawing out particular Genesis passages to justify monarchy by way of patriarchal analogy. Because God created Adam first, authority, and therefore government, began with him. Adam bore original political dominion immediately over his family, his first subjects. Royalists extrapolated this political idea outward to include Adam’s sons who ruled similarly over their households. If it could be proved that a king’s authority was modelled after Adam’s, then armed resistance was unlawful and against God’s ordinance. Royalists tended to assert monarchy as the superior civil model because they supposed it mirrored family authority, or modelled a national frame after local family government. A king was considered the head of a state or a national family just as a father exercised headship over his earthly family; both derived the substance of their authority immediately from God which was natural to their function. A king’s authority no more rested on the consent of his subjects than a father’s authority did upon his wife and children, his ‘subjects.’ 44 A key scriptural support for this theory of Adam’s political primacy was God’s curse upon Eve, and hence all women and wives, found in Genesis 3:16: “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children. Your 39 [Henry Parker] Observations upon some of his majesties late answers and expresses (London, 1642), A(1.) 40 Ibid. A(1), 2. 41 Ibid., 8. 42 Ibid., 13. 43 Ibid., 19. 44 As part of my research on paternalism, I consulted Gordon Schochet’s Patriarchalism in Political Thought: The Authoritarian Family and Political Speculation and Attitudes Especially in Seventeenth-century England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975). 12
ROYALISTS, REPUBLICANS, FIFTH MONARCHISTS AND LEVELLERS desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Contrary to a Parliamentarian reading, a constitutional Royalist read this text as positive affirmation of the first purposeful, divine enactment of prescriptive human authority originating in Adam. The husband’s rule over his wife and family, or ‘patriarchy,’ was extended by way of analogy through the patriarchs of Israel, now considered local kings, to a national monarchy. Nevertheless, Filmer concluded that governing authority originated in Adam before the fall, and therefore, before God’s curse upon Eve. Adam’s initial creation and pre-fall status represented sufficient grounds for primacy—a significant interpretive difference between constitutional and absolute Royalists. Parker’s tract was immediately attacked by Henry Ferne with his The resolving of conscience (London, 1642). Ferne did not directly address the origin of government from Genesis 3:16—he never even mentioned Adam’s authority over Eve—but he provided a strong case against resistance to the King from Exodus 20:12 with its command to honour one’s biological father and employed it in conjunction with Romans 13:1 and 2 Peter 2:13: “If it be agreed upon as a thing known in this State, that the King is the higher Power according to S t Paul,” and “the Supreme according to S t Peter,” then a king is “the Father of the Commonwealth according to the fifth Commandment.” Therefore, “surely it belongs to the Divine to urge obedience, honour, and subjection according to those places, and reprove resistance forbidden there.” 45 Ferne neglects to draw any links to the parental authority of a ‘mother,’ but employs the Exodus text politically to extend the authority of a father in relation to a family, to that of a king in relation to an entire people. Ferne’s The resolving of conscience was immediately attacked by the Oxford educated Presbyterian theologian Charles Herle (1598-1659) with An answer to mis-led doctor Ferne (London, 1642) and subsequently with A fuller answer to a treatise written by doctor Ferne, entituled The resolving of conscience upon this question (London,1642). Ferne responded from Oxford in April, 1643 with Conscience satisfied. The most relevant aspect of Conscience satisfied in regards to the origin of government is found in Section III, “Of the Originall of Governing power, and of the beginnings of Government in this Land.” The Exodus passage is again referenced. Ferne, with the support of Romans 13:1, states that “Governing power . . . flowed 45 Henry Ferne, The resolving of conscience, upon this question whether upon such a supposition or case, as is now usually made (the King will not discharge his trust, but is bent or seduced to subvert religion, laws, and liberties) subjects may take Arms and Resist? (London, 1642), Epistle, 1, 2. from that providence at first through the veines of nature in a paternal or Fatherly rule and by that as by a pattern in a Kingly Rule or Government, upon the encrease of people and Nations.” 46 Ferne located evidence linking paternal rule with regal rule from the Genesis account of Noah and his descendants. “The first Fathers of Mankind, were the first Kings and Rulers.” Noah dispatched his three sons to rule the earth, who in turn, generated more sons who became subsequent rulers and “cheife Fathers of those new Progenies, and had the Government, both Regall and Sacerdotall by Primogeniture, unless the chief Patriarch, from whom they all issued, saw cause to order it otherwise.” “Monarchy” then “was the first Government,” not “any Popular Rule, Aristocraticall or Democracticall.” “The first Kings were not by choice of the People,” and “Monarchy . . . is plainly ducta natura, by nature leading men from Paternall to Regall Govrnment, and exemplo divino,” since “the Government that God set up over his people, being Monarchiall still, in Moses, the Judges, the Kings.” This original “power of Kings was as of Fathers, and that the people had no power of coertion over them, more than children over Fathers.” Nevertheless, “the King so chosen is a Father, as in the fifth Commandment, and the people as children in the same relation for obedience and coertion, as at first in the generations of Noah.” 47 Sir Robert Filmer certainly had much to claim for monarchy by way of patriarchy and used the Genesis 3:16 passage as proof. He devotes his first chapter in Patriarcha (1680), “That the first Kings were Fathers of Families,” to the subject. 48 In light of the resistance debate, he attacked Philip Hunton’s A treatise of monarchie (1643) with The anarchy of limited or mixed monarchy (1648), which contains some minor polemical swipes at Observations. Hunton was a parliamentary constitutionalist and Filmer claimed that his understanding of the English Constitution as incorporating a mixed monarchy would inevitably lead to anarchy given its emphasis upon limited kingship and popular consent. The anarchy contains powerful argumentation for absolute monarchy divinely derived, and based in patriarchal interpretations of Genesis 3:16 and Exodus 20:5. Filmer subtly condemned Hunton’s use of Genesis 3:16 in support of an Adamic and paternalistic origin of government. Hunton’s mistake was to rest a grant of governance to Adam upon God’s curse of Eve and extend it to limited monarchy and popular consent. 46 Henry Ferne, Conscience satisfied. That there is no warrant for the armes now taken up by the subject. (Oxford, 1643), 7-8. 47 Ibid., 8, 9. 48 Sir Robert Filmer, Patriarcha: Or the natural power of kings (London, 1680): 8-24. 13
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