III

unavoidably been engaged in it by our author’s way of writing, who, huddling several suppositions together, and that in doubtful and general terms, makes such a medley and confusion, that it is impossible to show his mistakes, without examining the several senses wherein his words may be taken, and without seeing how, in any of these various meanings, they will consist together, and have any truth in them: for in this present passage before us, how can anyone argue against this position of his, “that Adam was a king from his creation,” unless one examine, whether the words, “from his creation,” be to be taken as they may, for the time of the commencement of his government, as the foregoing words import, “as soon as he was created he was monarch”: or, for the cause of it, as he says, p. 11, “creation made man prince of his posterity?” How farther can one judge of the truth of his being thus king, till one has examined whether king be to taken, as the words in the beginning of this passage would persuade, on supposition of his private dominion, which was, by God’s positive grant, “monarch of the world by appointment”; or king on supposition of his fatherly power over his offspring, which was by nature, “due by the right of nature”; whether, I say, king be to be taken in both, or one only of these two senses, or in neither of them, but only this, that creation made him prince, in a way different from both the other? For though this assertion, that “Adam was king from his creation,” be true in no sense, yet it stands here as an evident conclusion drawn from the preceding words, though in truth it be but a bare assertion joined to other assertions of the same kind, which confidently put together in words of undetermined and dubious meaning, look like a sort of arguing, when there is indeed neither proof nor connection: a way very familiar with our author: of which having given the reader a taste here, I shall, as much as the argument will permit me, avoid touching on hereafter; and should not have done it here, were it not to let the world see, how incoherences in matter, and suppositions without proofs put handsomely together in good words and a plausible style, are apt to pass for strong reason and good sense, till they come to be looked into with attention.