Barclay, “the great vindicators of the right of kings,” could not deny it, “but admit with one consent the natural liberty and equality of mankind,” for a truth unquestionable. And our author hath been so far from producing anything that may make good his great position, “that Adam was absolute monarch,” and so “men are not naturally free,” that even his own proofs make against him; so that to use his own way of arguing, “the first erroneous principle failing, the whole fabric of this vast engine of absolute power and tyranny drops down of itself,” and there needs no more to be said in answer to all that he builds upon so false and frail a foundation.
But to save others the pains, were there any need, he is not sparing himself to show, by his own contradictions, the weakness of his own doctrine. Adam’s absolute and sole dominion is that which he is everywhere full of, and all along builds on, and yet he tells us, p. 12, “that as Adam was lord of his children, so his children under him had a command and power over their own children.” The unlimited and undivided sovereignty of Adam’s fatherhood, by our author’s computation, stood but a little while, only during the first generation; but as soon as he had grandchildren, Sir Robert could give but a very ill account of it. “Adam, as father of his children, saith he, hath an absolute, unlimited royal power over them, and by virtue thereof, over those that they begot, and so to all generations”; and yet his children, viz. Cain and Seth, have a paternal power over their children at the same time; so that they are at the same time absolute lords, and yet vassals and slaves; Adam has all the authority, as “grandfather of the people,” and they have a part of it, as fathers of a part of them; he is absolute over them, and their posterity, by having begotten them, and yet they are absolute over their children by the same title. “No, says our author, Adam’s children under him had power over their own children, but still with subordination to the first parent.” A good distinction that sounds well, and it is pity it signifies nothing, nor can be reconciled with our author’s words. I readily grant that supposing Adam’s absolute power over his posterity,