the mere name of antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the
people who are to live an hundred or a thousand years hence, may as
well take us for a precedent, as we make a precedent of those who
lived an hundred or a thousand years ago. The fact is, that portions
of antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing. It is
authority against authority all the way, till we come to the divine
origin of the rights of man at the creation. Here our enquiries find
a resting-place, and our reason finds a home. If a dispute about the
rights of man had arisen at the distance of an hundred years from the
creation, it is to this source of authority they must have referred,
and it is to this same source of authority that we must now refer.

Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of religion,
yet it may be worth observing, that the genealogy of Christ is traced
to Adam. Why then not trace the rights of man to the creation of man?
I will answer the question. Because there have been upstart
governments, thrusting themselves between, and presumptuously working
to un-make man.

If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the
mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first
generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no
succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can
set any up. The illuminating and divine principle of the equal rights
of man (for it has its origin from the Maker of man) relates, not
only to the living individuals, but to generations of men succeeding
each other. Every generation is equal in rights to generations which
preceded it, by the same rule that every individual is born equal in
rights with his contemporary.