Locke - The First Treatise of Government
The 1st Treatise is primarily a rebuttal of Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha which offered an argument for absolute monarchy, the devine rights of kings, which was based on linage from Adam.
Slavery is vile and unwanted
If we are to accept the devine rights of kings via linage to Adam, then we must accept all men are slaves. Not only that, but all princes are also slaves except the closest to Adam.
Locke sets up Patriarcha as the pinacle of devine right arguments and procedes to destroy it.
"Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that it is hardly to be conceived that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it" 1.1
A general attach on Filmer's lack of support for claims of patriarchal power.
"For it is scare credible that in a discourse where he pretends to confute the erroneous principle of man's natural freedom, he should do it by a bare supposition of Adam's authority, without offering any proof for that authority." 2.11
Attacks Filmer's conflation of Adam's sovereignty by creation and appointment.
Locke argues that the right of a father can't be invoked until children are born.
He mocks the in habit/in act distinction and notes Filmer must have been an author 'in habit' before the act of writing took place.
Refutes Filmer's claim of Adam's authority from Genesis. Locke argues instead that Gen 1.28 gave Adam power over only other creatures, not men, and that God's grant of power of creatures extends to all mankind.
The same term for creatures is used in multiple places. If Filmer's 'every living creature' includes men, then granting Adam rights to eat all living creatures empowers princes to eat their subjects.
@book{locke1988locke, title={Locke: Two Treatises of Government Student Edition}, author={Locke, John}, year={1988}, publisher={Cambridge University Press} }