IV
Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty, by Donation, Gen. 1:28
Having at last got through the foregoing passage, where we have been so long detained, not by the force of arguments and opposition, but by the intricacy of the words, and the doubtfulness of the meaning; let us go on to his next argument, for Adam’s sovereignty. Our author tells us in the words of Mr. Selden, that “Adam by donation from God, Gen. 1:28, was made the general lord of all things, not without such a private dominion to himself, as without his grant did exclude his children. This determination of Mr. Selden,” says our author, “is consonant to the history of the Bible, and natural reason,” Obs. 210. And in his Pref. to his “Observations on Aristotle,” he says thus, “The first government in the world was monarchical in the father of all flesh, Adam being commanded to multiply and people the earth, and to subdue it, and having dominion given him over all creatures, was thereby the monarch of the whole world. None of his posterity had any right to possess anything, but by his grant or permission, or by succession from him. The earth, saith the Psalmist, hath he given to the children of men, which shows the title comes from fatherhood.”
Before I examine this argument, and the text on which it is founded, it is necessary to desire the reader to observe, that our author, according to his usual method, begins in one sense, and concludes in another; he begins here with Adam’s propriety, or private dominion, by donation; and his conclusion is, “which shows the title comes from fatherhood.”
But let us see the argument. The words of the text are these: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth, Gen. 1:28”; from whence our author concludes, “that Adam, having here dominion given him over all creatures,” was thereby the monarch of the whole “world”; whereby must be meant, that either this grant of God gave Adam property, or, as our author calls it, private dominion over the earth, and all inferior or irrational creatures, and so consequently that he was thereby monarch; or secondly, that it gave him rule and dominion over all earthly creatures whatsoever, and thereby over his children; and so he was monarch: for, as Mr. Selden has properly worded it, “Adam was made general lord of all things,” one may very clearly understand him, that he means nothing to be granted to Adam here but property, and therefore he says not one word of Adam’s monarchy. But our author says, “Adam was hereby monarch of the world,” which, properly speaking, signifies sovereign ruler of all the men in the world; and so Adam by this grant, must be constituted such a ruler. If our author means otherwise, he might with much clearness have said, that “Adam was hereby proprietor of the whole world.” But he begs your pardon in that point: clear distinct speaking not serving everywhere to his purpose, you must not expect it in him, as in Mr. Selden, or other such writers.
In opposition, therefore, to our author’s doctrine, that “Adam was monarch of the whole world,” founded on this place I shall show,
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That by this grant, Gen. 1:28, God gave no immediate power to Adam over men, over his children, over those of his own species; and so he was not made ruler, or monarch, by this charter.
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That by this grant God gave him not private dominion over the inferior creatures, but right in common with all mankind; so neither was he monarch, upon the account of the property here given him.
1. That this donation, Gen. 1:28, gave Adam no power over men, will appear if we consider the words of it: for since all positive grants convey no more than the express words they are made in will carry, let us see which of them here will comprehend mankind, or Adam’s posterity; and those, I imagine, if any, must be these, “every living thing that moveth”: the words in Hebrew are, חיה חרמשת i.e. bestiam reptantem, of which words the scripture itself is the best interpreter: God having created the fishes and fowls the fifth day, the beginning of the sixth he creates the irrational inhabitants of the dry land, which, ver. 24, are described in these words, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind; cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, after his kind, and ver. 2, and God made the beasts of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth on the earth after his kind”: here, in the creation of the brute inhabitants of the earth, he first speaks of them all under one general name, of living creatures, and then afterwards divides them into three ranks. 1. Cattle or such creatures as were or might be tame, and so be the private possession of particular men; 2. חיה which, ver. 24–25, in our Bible, is translated beasts, and by the Septuagint θηρία, wild beasts, and is the same word, that here in our text, ver. 28, where we have this great charter to Adam, is translated living thing, and is also the same word used, Gen. 9:2, where this grant is renewed to Noah, and there likewise translated beast. 3. The third rank where the creeping animals, which ver. 24–25, are comprised under the word, חרמשת, the same that is used here, ver. 28, and is translated moving, but in the former
