68. Of the prerogative of the first born son.
1. Quest. May not a parent prefer his fist born child, and heir before his other children?
Answ. We must put difference betwixt a father's disposing his estate upon his children, and the ordering of his affection towards them. A parent's affection, and care of good education, and desire of true good, and faithful prayers to God, may be as great towards his younger children, as towards his eldest son and heir, and yet may he bestow the greatest patrimony upon the heir: which is no partiality.
2. Quest. Is it then just and equal that the eldest son should have a greater patrimony than any of the rest?
Answ. It is most just and equal. For
1. God hath so appointed it: yea he made this to be one of the prerogatives of the first born, to have a double portion on (Deut 21:17). Upon this ground Joseph, who was the first born of the true wife, had a double portion; and as a testimony thereof his posterity made two tribes.
2. The laws of all nations do order as much.
3. Our law giveth the whole inheritance of freeholds to the eldest son: in which respect it is due unto him. For in civil and temporal matters this rule is true, we live by law. I take it to be a matter of conscience for a parent to leave that to every child which by law is due to him. Neither is it without good reason that the law ordaineth that a parent's whole estate of freehold land should descend: for
1. There is an excellency in the first born, as is evident by Jacob's speech to his eldest son, thou art my first born, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power (Gen 49:3). And thereupon God took the first born as peculiar to himself (Exod 13:2).
2. Houses and families by this means are upheld and continued from age to age. How needful it is for the establishment of a Commonwealth that families should thus be continued, is evident both by experience to all such as have but half an eye to see wherein the stability of a Commonwealth consisteth, and also by the many laws which God ordained among the Jews for this purpose: as
1. That no land should be quite cut off from a family (Lev 25:23).
2. That if any through poverty were forced to sell his land, the next of kin was to buy it (Lev 25:25).
3. That if a man that had sold his land, could by no means redeem it again, at the year of Jubilee he was to have the possession of it again (Lev 25:28).
4. That if daughters were heirs they should not marry out of their father's tribe: and this reason is given, that every man may enjoy the inheritance of his fathers (Num 36:8).
Object. By leaving the whole inheritance to the eldest, he may be made a gentleman, and all the other beggars.
Answ. In this respect parents ought to be so much the more provident for their other children, in training them up to callings, or laying up portions, or settling other estates upon them beside the main inheritance, or in taking order that competent portions be raised out of the inheritance of the eldest son, in case God take them away before they have otherwise provided for the children.
Out of this answer may a third reason be gathered, to shew that it is a behoveful law for the Commonwealth that the heir should have all the land. For this law maketh parents more careful in training up their younger sons to sundry callings which are profitable to a Commonwealth. If every child should have a part of his father's lands, they would all so depend thereupon, as none of them would exercise themselves to such callings as are means of men's maintenance.
