that because he did it, therefore he had a right to do it: he lay with her also; by the same way of proof, he had a right to do that too. If the consequence be good from doing, to a right of doing, Absalom too may be reckoned amongst our author’s sovereigns, for he pronounced such a sentence of death against his brother Amnon, and much upon a like occasion, and had it executed too, if that be sufficient to prove a dominion of life and death.
But allowing this all to be clear demonstration of sovereign power, who was it that had this “lordship by right descending to him from Adam, as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch?” Judah, says our author, Judah a younger son of Jacob, his father and elder brethren living; so that if our author’s own proof be to be taken, a younger brother may, in the life of his father and elder brothers, “by right of descent, enjoy Adam’s monarchical power”; and if one so qualified may be a monarch by descent, why may not every man? if Judah, his father and elder brother living, were one of Adam’s heirs, I know not who can be excluded from this inheritance; all men by inheritance may be monarchs as well as Judah.