“them” can by no means signify Adam alone. In the 26th verse, where God declares his intention to give this dominion, it is plain he meant, that he would make a species of creatures that should have dominion over the other species of this terrestrial globe. The words are, “And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish,” etc. They then were to have dominion. Who? even those who were to have the image of God, the individuals of that species of man that he was going to make; for that “them” should signify Adam singly, exclusive of the rest that should be in the world with him, is against both scripture and all reason; and it cannot possibly be made sense, if man in the former part of the verse do not signify the same with “them” in the latter; only man there, as is usual, is taken for the species, and “them” the individuals of that species: and we have a reason in the very text. God makes him “in his own image, after his own likeness; makes him an intellectual creature, and so capable of dominion”: for wherein soever else the image of God consisted, the intellectual nature was certainly a part of it, and belonged to the whole species, and enabled them to have dominion over the inferior creatures; and therefore David says in the 8th Psalm above cited, “Thou hast made him little lower than the angels, thou hast made him to have dominion.” It is not of Adam king David speaks here, for verse 4, it is plain it is of man, and the son of man, of the species of mankind.
And that this grant spoken to Adam was made to him, and the whole species of man, is clear from our author’s own proof out of the Psalmist. “The earth,” saith the Psalmist, “hath he given to the children of men, which shows the title comes from fatherhood.” These are Sir Robert’s words in the preface before cited, and a strange inference it is he makes: God hath “given the earth to the children of men, ergo the title comes from fatherhood.” It is pity the propriety of the Hebrew tongue had not used fathers of men, instead of children of men, to express mankind; then indeed our author might have had the countenance of the sounds of the words to have placed the title in the fatherhood. But to conclude,