them distinct from our obedience to the magiftrate, and from which the most abfolute power of princes cannot abfolve us. What

this duty is, we shall in its due place examine.

§. 67. And thus we have at last got thro' all, that in our author looks like an argument for that abfolute unlimited fovereignty described, fect. 8. which he fuppofes in Adam; so that mankind ever fince have been all born flaves, without any title to freedom. But if creation, which gave nothing but a being, made not Adam prince of his pofterity: if Adam, Gen. i. 28. was not conftituted lord of mankind, nor had a private dominion given him exclufive of his children, but only a right and power over the earth, and inferiour creatures in common with the children of men; if also Gen. iii. 16. God gave not any political power to Adam over his wife and children, but only fubjected Eve to Adam, as a punishment, or foretold the fubjection of the weaker fex, in the ordering the common concernments of their families, but gave not thereby to Adam, as to the husband, power of life and death, which neceffarily belongs to the magiftrate: if fathers by begetting their children acquire no fuch power ove them; and if the command, Honour thy father and mother, give it not, but only enjoins a duty owing to parents equally, whether fubjects or not, and to the mother as well as the father; if all this be fo, as I

think, by what has been faid, is very evident; then man has a natural freedom, notwithstanding all our author confidently fays to the contrary; fince all that share in the fame common nature, faculties and powers, are in nature equal, and ought to partake in the fame common rights and privileges, till the manifeft appointment of God, who is Lord over all, bleffed for ever, can be produced to fhew any particular perfon's fupremacy; or a man's own confent fubjects him to a superiour. This is fo plain, that our author confeffes, that Sir John Hayward, Blackwood and Barclay, the great vindicators of the right of kings, could not deny it, but admit with one confent the natural liberty and equality of mankind, for a truth unquestionable. And our author hath been fo far from producing any thing, that may make good his great pofition, that Adam was abfolute monarch, and so men are not naturally free, that even his own proofs make against him; fo that to ufe his own way of arguing, the firft erroneous principle failing, the whole fabric of this vaft engine of abfolute power and tyranny drops down of itfelf, and there needs no more to be faid in answer to all that he builds upon fo falfe and frail a foundation.

1

§. 68. But to fave others the pains, were there any need, he is not sparing himself to fhew, by his own contradictions, the weaknefs of his own doctrine. Adam's abfolute

and

and fole dominion is that, which he is every where full of, and all along builds on, and yet he tells us, p. 12. that as Adam was lord of his children, fo his children under him had a command and power over their own children. The unlimited and undivided fovereignty of Adam's fatherhood, by our author's computation, ftood but a little while, only during the first generation, but as foon as he had grand-children, Sir Robert could give but a very ill account of it. Adam, as father of his children, faith he, hath an abfolute, unlimited royal power over them, and by virtue thereof over thofe that they begot, and fo to all generations; and yet his children, viz. Cain and Seth, have a paternal power over their children at the fame time; fo that they are at the fame time abfolute lords, and yet vaffals and flaves; Adam has all the authority, as grand-father of the people, and they have a part of it as fathers of a part of them: he is abfolute over them and their posterity, by having begotten them, and yet they are abfolute over their children by the fame title. No, fays our author, Adam's children under him had power over their own children, but fill with fubordination to the first parent. A good diftinction that founds well, and it is pity it fignifies nothing, nor can be reconciled with our author's words. I readily grant, that fuppofing Adam's abfolute power over his pofterity, any of his children might have

from him a delegated, and fo a fubordinate power over a part, or all the reft: but that cannot be the power our author speaks of here; it is not a power by grant and commiffion, but the natural paternal power he supposes a father to have over his children. For 1. he fays, As Adam was lord of his children, fo his children under him had a power over their own children: they were then lords over their own children after the fame manner, and by the fame 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 fuch 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 fcripture to affirm, that Adam's children had any other power over theirs, than what they naturally had as fathers.

§. 69. But that he means here paternal power, and no other, is past doubt, from the inference he makes in these words immediately following, I fee not then how the children of Adam, or of any man elfe, can be free from fubjection to their parents. Whereby it appears that the power on one fide, and the fubjection on the other, our author here fpeaks of, is that natural power and subjection be

tween

tween parents and children: for that which every man's children owed, could be no other; and that our author always affirms to be abfolute and unlimited. This natural power of parents over their children, Adam had over his pofterity, fays our author; and this power of parents over their children, his children had over theirs in his life-time, fays our author also; so that Adam, by a natural right of father, had an abfolute unlimited power over all his pofterity, and at the fame time his children had by the fame right absolute unlimited power over theirs. Here then are two abfolute unlimited powers existing together, which I would have any body reconcile one to another, or to common fense. For the falvo he has put in of fubordination, makes it more abfurd: to have one abfolute, unlimited, nay unlimitable power in fubordination to another, is fo manifeft a contradiction, that nothing can be more. is abfolute prince with the unlimited authority of fatherhood over all his pofterity; all his posterity are then abfolutely his fubjects; and, as our author fays, his flaves, children, and grand-children, are equally in this state of fubjection and flavery; and yet, fays our author, the children of Adam have paternal, i. e. abfolute unlimited power over their own children: Which in plain English is, they are flaves and abfolute princes at the fame time, and in the fame government; and one G part

Adam