And accordingly we see the
positive law of God every where joins them together, without
distinction, when it commands the obedience of children, Honour
thy father and thy mother, Exod. xx. 12. Whosoever curseth his
father or his mother, Lev. xx. 9. Ye shall fear every man his
mother and his father, Lev. xix. 3. Children, obey your
parents, &c. Eph. vi. 1. is the stile of the Old and New
Testament.
Sec. 53. Had but this one thing been well considered,
without looking any deeper into the matter, it might perhaps have
kept men from running into those gross mistakes, they have made,
about this power of parents; which, however it might, without any
great harshness, bear the name of absolute dominion, and regal
authority, when under the title of paternal power it seemed
appropriated to the father, would yet have founded but oddly, and
in the very name shewn the absurdity, if this supposed absolute
power over children had been called parental; and thereby have
discovered, that it belonged to the mother too: for it will but
very ill serve the turn of those men, who contend so much for the
absolute power and authority of the fatherhood, as they call
it, that the mother should have any share in it; and it would
have but ill supported the monarchy they contend for, when by
the very name it appeared, that that fundamental authority, from
whence they would derive their government of a single person
only, was not placed in one, but two persons jointly.
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