of friendship and equality, and not of jurisdiction and authority, though he were really but his nephew. And if our author knows that Abraham was Adam’s heir, and a king, it was more, it seems, than Abraham himself knew, or his servant whom he sent a wooing for his son; for when he sets out the advantages of the match, Gen. 24:35, thereby to prevail with the young woman and her friends, he says, “I am Abraham’s servant, and the Lord hath blessed my master greatly, and he is become great; and he hath given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and menservants and maidservants, and camels and asses; and Sarah, my master’s wife, bare a son to my master when she was old, and unto him hath he given all he hath.” Can one think that a discreet servant, that was thus particular to set out his master’s greatness, would have omitted the crown Isaac was to have, if he had known of any such? Can it be imagined he should have neglected to have told them on such an occasion as this, that Abraham was a king, a name well known at that time, for he had nine of them his neighbours, if he or his master had thought any such thing, the likeliest matter of all the rest, to make his errand successful?
But this discovery, it seems, was reserved for our author to make two or three thousand years after, and let him enjoy the credit of it; only he should have taken care that some of Adam’s land should have descended to this his heir, as well as all Adam’s lordship: for though this lordship which Abraham (if we may believe our author), as well as the other patriarchs, “by right descending to him, did enjoy, was as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch which hath been since the creation”; yet his estate, his territories, his dominions, were very narrow and scanty; for he had not the possession of a foot of land, till he bought a field and a cave of the sons of Heth to bury Sarah in.
The instance of Esau joined with this of Abraham, to prove that the “lordship which Adam had over the whole world, by right descending from him, the patriarchs did enjoy,” is yet more pleasant than the former.