Thus when God says of Jacob and Esau, “that the elder should serve the younger,” Gen. 25:23, nobody supposes that God hereby made Jacob Esau’s sovereign, but foretold what should de facto come to pass.
But if these words here spoken to Eve must needs be understood as a law to bind her and all other women to subjection, it can be no other subjection than what every wife owes her husband; and then if this be the “original grant of government and the foundation of monarchical power,” there will be as many monarchs as there are husbands: if therefore these words give any power to Adam, it can be only a conjugal power, not political; the power that every husband hath to order the things of private concernment in his family, as proprietor of the goods and land there, and to have his will take place before that of his wife in all things of their common concernment; but not a political power of life and death over her, much less over anybody else.
This I am sure: if our author will have this text to be a “grant, the original grant of government,” political government, he ought to have proved it by some better arguments than by barely saying, that “thy desire shall be unto thy husband,” was a law whereby Eve, and “all that should come of her,” were subjected to the absolute monarchical power of Adam, and his heirs. “Thy desire shall be to thy husband,” is too doubtful an expression, of whose signification interpreters are not agreed, to build so confidently on, and in a matter of such moment, and so great and general concernment: but our author, according to his way of writing, having once named the text, concludes presently, without any more ado, that the meaning is as he would have it. Let the words rule and subject be but found in the text or margin, and it immediately signifies the duty of a subject to his prince; the relation is changed, and though God says husband, Sir Robert will have it king; Adam has presently absolute monarchical power over Eve, and not only over Eve, but “all that should come of her,” though the scripture says not a word of it, nor our author a word to prove it. But Adam must for all that be an absolute monarch,