like all the nations,
and
that our king may judge us,
and go out before us,
and
fight our battles. Samuel continued
to reason with them, but to no purpose; he set before
them their ingratitude, but all would not avail; and
seeing them fully bent on their folly, he cried out,
I
will call unto the Lord,
and he shall send thunder
and Rain (which then was a punishment, being
in the time of wheat harvest)
that ye may
perceive and see that your
wickedness is great which ye
have done in the sight of
the Lord,
and the Lord sent
thunder and Rain that day,
and all the people greatly
feared the Lord and Samuel.
And all the people said unto
Samuel,
pray for thy servants
unto the Lord thy god that
we die not,
for WE HAVE ADDED
UNTO OUR SINS THIS EVIL, TO ASK A KING. These
portions of scripture are direct and positive.
They admit of no equivocal construction. That
the Almighty hath here entered his protest against
monarchical government, is true, or the scripture
is false. And a man hath good reason to believe
that there is as much of kingcraft, as priestcraft,
in withholding the scripture from the public in Popish
countries. For monarchy in every instance is
the Popery of government.
To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary
succession; and as the first is a degradation and
lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as
a matter of right, is an insult and an imposition
on posterity. For all men being originally equals,
no one by birth could have a right to set
up his own family in perpetual preference to all others
for ever, and though himself might deserve some
decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet
his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit
them. One of the strongest natural proofs
of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that
nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so
frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind
an ass for A lion.