force of reason and argument, that makes them for absolute monarchy, but some other by interest, and therefore are resolved to applaud any author, that writes in favour of this doctrine, whether he support it with reason or no. But I hope they do not expect, that rational and indifferent men should be brought over to their opinion, because this their great doctor of it, in a discourse made on purpose, to set up the absolute monarchical power of Adam, in opposition to the natural freedom of mankind, has said so little to prove it, from whence it is rather naturally to be concluded, that there is little to be said.
But that I might omit no care to inform myself in our author’s full sense, I consulted his Observations on Aristotle, Hobbes, etc. to see whether in disputing with others he made use of any arguments for this his darling tenet of Adam’s sovereignty; since in his treatise of the “natural power of kings,” he hath been so sparing of them. In his “ Observations on Mr. Hobbes’s Leviathan ,” I think he has put, in short, all those arguments for it together, which in his writings I find him anywhere to make use of: his words are these: “If God created only Adam, and of a piece of him made the woman, and if by generation from them two, as parts of them, all mankind be propagated: if also God gave to Adam not only the dominion over the woman and the children that should issue from them, but also over all the earth to subdue it, and over all the creatures on it, so that as long as Adam lived, no man could claim or enjoy anything but by donation, assignation, or permission from him, I wonder”; etc. Obs. 165. Here we have the sum of all his arguments, for Adam’s sovereignty, and against natural freedom, which I find up and down in his other treatises; and they are these following: “God’s creation of Adam, the dominion he gave him over Eve, and the dominion he had as father over his children”: all which I shall particularly consider.