younger brothers, “by ancient and prime right of lineal succession,” may have as well as the elder, that every man living may have a right to, by lineal succession, and Sir Robert, as well as any other. And so what a brave right of lineal succession, to his paternal or regal government, our author has reestablished, for the securing the rights and inheritance of crowns, where everyone may have it, let the world consider.
But says our author, however, p. 19, “Whensoever God made choice of any special person to be king, he intended that the issue also should have benefit thereof, as being comprehended sufficiently in the person of the father, although the father was only named in the grant.” This yet will not help out succession: for if, as our author says, the benefit of the grant be intended to the issue of the grantee, this will not direct the succession; since, if God give anything to a man and his issue in general, the claim cannot be to any one of that issue in particular; everyone that is of his race will have an equal right. If it be said, our author meant heir, I believe our author was as willing as anybody to have used that word, if it would have served his turn: but Solomon who succeeded David in the throne, being no more his heir than Jeroboam, who succeeded him in the government of the ten tribes, was his issue, our author had reason to avoid saying, that God intended it to the heirs, when that would not hold in a succession, which our author could not except against; and so he has left his succession as undetermined, as if he had said nothing about it: for if the regal power be given by God to a man and his issue, as the land of Canaan was to Abraham and his seed, must they not all have a title to it, all share in it? And one may as well say; that by God’s grant to Abraham and his seed, the land of Canaan was to belong only to one of his seed exclusive of all others, as by God’s grant of dominion to a man and his issue, this dominion was to belong in peculiar to one of his issue exclusive of all others.
But how will our author prove that whensoever God made choice of any special person to be a king, he intended that “the (I suppose he means