Page:Two Treatises of Government.djvu/30

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16
Of Government.

ration from them two, as parts of them, all mankind be propagated: if alſo God gave to Adam not only the dominion over the woman and the children that ſhould iſſue from them, but alſo over all the earth to ſubdue it, and over all the creatures on it, ſo that as long as Adam lived, no man could claim or enjoy any thing but by donation, aſſignation or permiſſion from him, I wonder, &c. Obſervations, 165. Here we have the ſum of all his arguments, for Adam's ſovereignty, and againſt natural freedom, which I find up and down in his other treatiſes: and they are theſe following; God's creation of Adam, the dominion he gave him over Eve, and the dominion he had as father over his children: all which I ſhall particularly conſider.


CHAP. III.

Of Adam's Title to Sovereignty by Creation.

§. 15. SIR Robert, in his preface to his Obſervations on Ariſtotle's politics, tells us, A natural freedom of mankind cannot be ſuppoſed without the denial of the creation of Adam: but how Adam's being created, which was nothing but his receiving a being immediately from omnipotence and the hand of God, gave Adam a ſovereignty over any thing, I cannot ſee, nor conſequently underſtand, how a ſuppoſition of natural freedom isa