§. 56. Adam was created a perfect man, his body and mind in full possession of
their strength and reason, and so was capable from the first instance of his
being to provide for his own support and preservation, and govern his actions
according to the dictates of the law of reason God had implanted in him. From
him the world is peopled with his descendants, who are all born infants, weak
and helpless, without knowledge or understanding. But to supply the defects of
this imperfect state till the improvement of growth and age had removed them,
Adam and Eve, and after them all parents were, by the law of Nature, under an
obligation to preserve, nourish and educate the children they had begotten, not
as their own workmanship, but the workmanship of their own Maker, the Almighty,
to whom they were to be accountable for them.
