VIII

conveyed down to future kings and governors, so as to give them a title to the obedience and subjection of the people. But these contradictions lie so open, that the very reading of our author’s own words will discover them to any ordinary understanding; and though what I have quoted out of him (with abundance more of the same strain and coherence, which might be found in him) might well excuse me from any farther trouble in this argument, yet having proposed to myself, to examine the main parts of his doctrine, I shall a little more particularly consider how inheritance, grant, usurpation, or election, can anyway make out government in the world upon his principles; or derive to anyone a right of empire, from this regal authority of Adam, had it been ever so well proved, that he had been absolute monarch, and lord of the whole world.