Page:Two Treatises of Government.djvu/37

his words may be taken, and without ſeeing how, in any of theſe various meanings, they will conſiſt together, and have any truth in them : for in this preſent paſſage before us, how can any one argue againſt this poſition of his, that Adam was a king from his creation, unleſs one examine, whether the words, from his creation, be to be taken, as they may, for the time of the commencement of his government, as the foregoing words import, as ſoon as he was created he was monarch ; or, for the cauſe of it, as he ſays, p. 11. creation made man prince of his poſterity ? how farther can one judge of the truth of his being thus king, till one has examined whether king be to be taken, as the words in the beginning of this paſſage would perſuade, on ſuppoſition of his private dominion, which was, by God's poſitive grant, monarch of the world by appointment; or king on ſuppoſition of his fatherly power over his off-ſpring, which was by nature, due by the right of nature; whether, I ſay, king be to be taken in both, or one only of theſe two ſenſes, or in neither of them, but only this, that creation made him prince, in a way different from both the other ? For though this aſſertion, that Adam was king from his creation, be true in no ſenſe, yet it ſtands here as an evident concluſion drawn from the preceding words, though in truth it be but a bare aſſertion joined to other aſſertions of the ſame kind, which confidently put to-