for the Jews at that time were without a King, and in a state of vassalage to the Romans.

Near three thousand years passed away from the Mosaick account of the creation, till the Jews, under a national delusion, requested a King. Till then, their form of Government (except in extraordinary cases where the Almighty interposed) was a kind of Republick, administered by a Judge and the Elders of the Tribes. Kings they had none, and it was held sinful to acknowledge any Being under that title but the Lord of Hosts. And when a man seriously reflects on the idolatrous homage which is paid to the persons of Kings, he need not wonder that the Almighty, ever jealous of his honour, should disapprove of a form of Government which so impiously invades the prerogative of Heaven.

Monarchy is ranked in Scripture as one of the sins of the Jews, for which a curse in reserve is denounced against them. The history of that transaction is worth attending to:

The children of Israel being oppressed by the Midianites, Gideon marched against them with a small army, and victory, through the Divine interposition, decided in his favour. The Jews, elate with success, and attributing it to the generalship of Gideon, proposed making him a King, saying, "Rule thou over us, thou and thy son, and thy son's son." Here was temptation in its fullest extent; not a kingdom only, but an hereditary one; but Gideon, in the piety of his soul, replied, "I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you; the Lord shall rule over you." words need not be more explicit; Gideon doth not decline the honour, but denieth their right to give it; neither doth he compliment them with invented declarations of his thanks, but, in the positive style of a Prophet, charges them with disaffection to their proper Sovereign, the King of Heaven.

About one hundred and thirty years after this, they fell again into the same error. The hankering which the Jews had for the idolatrous customs of the Heathens, is something exceedingly unaccountable; but so it was, that laying hold of the misconduct of Samuel's two sons, who were intrusted with some secular concerns, they came in an abrupt and clamorous manner to Samuel, saying, "Behold thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways, now make us a King to judge us like all the other nations." And here we cannot but observe that their motives were bad, viz: that they might be like unto other nations, i. e. the Heathens, whereas their true glory laid in being as much unlike them as possible. "But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a King to judge us: and Samuel prayed unto the Lord, and the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, hut they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me and served other gods: so do they also unto thee. Now, therefore, hearken unto their voice; howbeit, protest solemnly unto them and shew them the manner of the King that shall reign over them:" i. e. not of any particular King, but the general manner of the Kings of the earth, whom Israel was so eagerly copying after. And notwithstanding the great distance of time and difference of manners, the character is still in fashion. "And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people, that asked of him a King. And he said, this shall be the manner of the King that shall reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariots;" (this description agrees with the present mode of impressing men:) "and he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties, and will set them to ear his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers;" (this describes the expense and luxury as well as the oppression of Kings;) "and he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give them to his officers and to his servants." (By which we see that bribery, corruption, and favouritism, are the standing vices of Kings.) "And he will take the tenth of your men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work: and he will take the tenth of your sheep, and ye shall be his servants, and ye shall cry out in that day because of your King, which ye shall have chosen, and the Lord will not hear you in that day." This accounts for the continuation of Monarchy; neither do the characters of the few good Kings which have lived since, either sanctify the title, or blot out the sinfulness of the origin; the high encomium given of David takes no notice of him officially as a King, but only as a man after God's own heart, "Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel, and they said nay, but we will have a King over us, that we may be 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, in asking you a King. So Samuel called unto 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 publick 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 cotemporaries, 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.

Secondly, as no man at first could possess any other pub-lick honours than were bestowed upon him, so the givers of those honours could have no power to give away the right of posterity, and though they might say "we choose you for our head," they could not, without manifest injustice to their children, say "that your children and your children's children shall reign over ours for ever." Because such an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact, might (perhaps) in the next succession put them under the government of a rogue or a fool. Most wise men, in their private sentiments, have ever treated hereditary right with contempt; yet it is one of those evils which, when once established, is not easily removed; many submit from fear, others from superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the King the plunder of the rest.

This is supposing the present race of Kings in the world to have had an honourable origin; whereas, it is more than probable, that could we take off the dark covering of antiquity, and trace them to their first rise, that we should find the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners, or pre-eminence in subtility, obtained him the title of chief among plunderers; and who, by increasing in power and extending his depredations, overawed the quiet and defenseless to purchase their safety by frequent contributions. Yet his electors could have no idea of giving hereditary right to his descendants, because such a perpetual exclusion of themselves was incompatible with the free and unrestrained principles they professed to live by. Wherefore, hereditary succession, in the early ages of Monarchy, could not take place as a matter of claim, but as something casual or complemented; but as few or no records were extant in