Buchanan was sanctioned by success, but that of Parsons was disproved by his colleague
Campion's execution.
Even before the Reformation, theologians tended to believe in setting limits to kingly power. This
was part of the battle between the Church and the State which raged throughout Europe during
most of the Middle Ages. In this battle, the State depended upon armed force, the Church upon
cleverness and sanctity. As long as the Church had both these merits, it won; when it came to have
cleverness only, it lost. But the things which eminent and holy men had said against the power of
kings remained on record. Though intended in the interests of the Pope, they could be used to
support the rights of the people to self-government. "The subtle schoolmen," says Filmer, "to be
sure to thrust down the king below the Pope, thought it the safest course to advance the people
above the king, so that the papal power might take the place of the regal." He quotes the
theologian Bellarmine as saying that secular power is bestowed by men (i.e., not by God), and "is
in the people unless they bestow it on a prince"; thus Bellarmine, according to Filmer, "makes
God the immediate author of a democratical estate"--which sounds to him as shocking as it would
to a modern plutocrat to say that God is the immediate author of Bolshevism.
Filmer derives political power, not from any contract, nor yet from any consideration of the public
good, but entirely from the authority of a father over his children. His view is: that the source of
regal authority is subjection of children to parents; that the patriarchs in Genesis were monarchs;
that kings are the heirs of Adam, or at least are to be regarded as such; that the natural rights of a
king are the same as those of a father; and that, by nature, sons are never free of paternal power,
even when the son is adult and the parent is in his dotage.
This whole theory seems to a modern mind so fantastic that it is hard to believe it was seriously
maintained. We are not accustomed to deriving political rights from the story of Adam and Eve.
We hold it obvious that parental power should cease completely when the son or daughter reaches
the age of twenty-one, and that before that it should be very strictly limited both by the State and
by the right of independent initiative which the young have gradually acquired. We recognize that
the mother has rights at least equal to those of the