Note 1164 — Chapter III

Filmer begins his Patriarcha (1680) with the remark that the doctrine of natural freedom and the right to choose governments had been "a common opinion ... since the time that school divinity began to flourish." Like Salmasius, he fathers the doctrine on the Papacy; and, indeed, the Church of Rome had notoriously employed it in its strifes with kings, at its own convenience; but it had as notoriously been put forward by many lay communities on their own behalf, and had been practically acted on in England over and over again. And it is clearly laid down in the third century by Tertullian, Ad Scapulam, ii.