more certainty: but when he vouchsafes to fpeak to men, I do not think he speaks differently from them, in croffing the rules of language in ufe amongst them: this would not be to cond to their capacities, when he humbles himfelf to fpeak to them, but to lofe his defign in fpeaking what, thus fpoken, they could not understand. And yet thus muft we think of God, if the interpretations of fcripture, neceffary to maintain our author's doctrine, must be received for good: for by the ordinary rules of language, it will be very hard to underfland what God fays, if what he speaks here, in the fingular number, to Adam, muft be understood to be fpoken to all mankind, and what he fays in the plural number, i. Gen. 26, and 28. must be understood of Adam alone, exclufive of all others, and what he fays to Noah and his fons jointly, muft be understood to be meant to Noah alone, Gen. ix.

§. 47. Farther it is to be noted, that these words here of iii. Gen. 16. which our author calls the original grant of government, were not spoken to Adam, neither indeed was there any grant in them made to Adam, but a punishment laid upon Eve: and if we will take them as they were directed in particular to her, or in her, as their reprefentative, to all other women, they will at most concern the female fex only, and import no more, but that fubjection they fhould ordinarily be

in

in to their husbands; but there is here no more law to oblige a woman to fuch a fubjection, if the circumftances either of her condition, or contract with her husband, fhould exempt her from it, than there is, that she should bring forth her children in forrow and pain, if there could be found a remedy for it, which is alfo a part of the fame curfe upon her: for the whole verfe runs thus, Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy forrow and thy conception; in forrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy defire fhall be to thy bufband, and be fall rule over thee. It would, I think, have been a hard matter for any body, but our author, to have found out a grant of monarchical government to Adam iņ thefe words, which were neither spoke to, nor of him: neither will any one, I fuppofe, by these words, think the weaker fex, as by a law, fo fubjected to the curfe contained in them, that it is their duty not to endeavour to avoid it. And will any one fay, that Eve, or any other woman, finned, if he were brought to bed without those multiplied pains God threatens her here with? or that either of our queens, Mary or Elizabeth, had they married any of their fubjects, had been by this text put into a political fubjection to him? or that he thereby fhould have had monarchical rule over her? God, in this text, gives not, that I fee, any authority to Adam over Eve, or to men over their wives, but

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only foretels what fhould be the woman's lot, how by his providence he would order it fo, that the fhould be fubject to her hufband, as we fee that generally the laws of mankind and cuftoms of nations have ordered it fo; and there is, I grant, a foundation in nature for it.

§. 48. Thus when God fays of Jacob and Efau, that the elder should ferve the younger, xxv. Gen. 23. no body fuppofes that God hereby made Jacob Efau's fovereign, but foretold what should de facto come to pass.

*

But if these words here fpoke to Eve must needs be understood as a law to bind her and all other women to subjection, it can be no other fubjection than what every wife owes her husband; and then if this be the original grant of government and the foundation of monarchical power, there will be as many monarchs as there are hufbands: if therefore these words give any power to Adam, it can be only a conjugal power, not political; the power that every husband hath to order the things of private concernment in his family, as proprietor of the goods and land there, and to have his will take place before that of his wife in all things of their common concernment; but not a political power of life and death over her, much less over any body else.

§. 49. This I am fure: if our author will have this text to be a grant, the original grant

of

of government, political government, he ought to have proved it by fome better arguments than by barely faying, that thy defire fhall be unto thy husband, was a law whereby Eve, and all that should comes of her, were fubjected to the abfolute monarchical power of Adam and his heirs. Thy defire fhall be to thy husband, is too doubtful an expreffion, of whofe fignification interpreters are not agreed, to build fo confidently on, and in a matter of fuch moment, and fo great and general concernment: but our author, according to his way of writing, having once named the text, concludes prefently without any more ado, that the meaning is as he would have it. Let the words rule and fubject be but found in the text or margent, and it immediately fignifies the duty of a fubject to his prince; the relation is changed, and though God fays bufband, Sir Robert will have it king; Adam has presently abfolute monarchical power over Eve, and not only over Eve, but all that fhould come of her, though the fcripture fays not a word of it, nor our author a word to prove it. But Adam muft for all that be an abfolute monarch, and fo down to the end of the chapter. And here I leave my reader to confider, whether my bare faying, without offering any reasons to evince it, that this text gave not Adam that abfolute monarchical power, our author fuppofes, be not as fufficient to deftroy that power, as his bare af

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fertion is to establish it, since the text mentions neither prince nor people, fpeaks nothing of abfolute or monarchical power, but the fubjection. of Eve to Adam, a wife to her husband. And he that would trace our author fo all through, would make a short and fufficient answer to the greatest part of the grounds he proceeds on, and abundantly confute them by barely denying; it being a fufficient answer to affertions without proof, to deny them without giving a reafon. And therefore fhould I have faid nothing but barely denied, that by this text the fupreme power was fettled and founded by God himself, in the fatherhood, limited to monarchy, and that to Adam's perfon and heirs, all which our author notably concludes from these words, as may be feen in the fame page, Obfervations, 244 it had been a sufficient answer: should I have defired any fober man only to have read the text, and confidered to whom, and on what occafion it was spoken, he would no doubt have wondered how our author found out monarchical abfolute power in it, had he not had an exceeding good faculty to find it himself, where he could not thew it others. And thus we have examined the two places of feripture, all that I remember our author brings to prove Adam's fovereignty, that fupremacy, which he fays, it was God's ordinance fhould be unlimited in Adam, and as large as all the acts of his will, Obfervations,

254.