any of his children might have from him a delegated, and so a subordinate power over a part, or all the rest: but that cannot be the power our author speaks of here; it is not a power by grant and commission, but the natural paternal power, he supposes a father to have over his children. For 1. he says, “As Adam was lord of his children, so his children under him had a power over their own children”: they were then lords over their own children after the same manner, and by the same title that Adam was, i.e. by right of generation, by right of fatherhood. 2. It is plain he means the natural power of fathers, because he limits it to be only “over their own children”; a delegated power has no such limitation as only over their own children, it might be over others, as well as their own children. 3. If it were a delegated power, it must appear in scripture; but there is no ground in scripture to affirm, that Adam’s children had any other power over theirs, than what they naturally had as fathers.
But that he means here paternal power, and no other, is past doubt, from the inference he makes in these words immediately following. “I see not then how the children of Adam, or of any man else can be free from subjection to their parents.” Whereby it appears that the power on one side and the subjection on the other, our author here speaks of, is that