But this is very far from giving parents a
power of command over their children, or an authority to make
laws and dispose as they please of their lives or liberties. It
is one thing to owe honour, respect, gratitude and assistance;
another to require an absolute obedience and submission. The
honour due to parents, a monarch in his throne owes his mother;
and yet this lessens not his authority, nor subjects him to her
government.
Sec. 67. The subjection of a minor places in the father a
temporary government, which terminates with the minority of the
child: and the honour due from a child, places in the parents a
perpetual right to respect, reverence, support and compliance
too, more or less, as the father's care, cost, and kindness in
his education, has been more or less. This ends not with
minority, but holds in all parts and conditions of a man's life.
The want of distinguishing these two powers, viz. that which
the father hath in the right of tuition, during minority, and
the right of honour all his life, may perhaps have caused a
great part of the mistakes about this matter: for to speak
properly of them, the first of these is rather the privilege of
children, and duty of parents, than any prerogative of paternal
power. The nourishment and education of their children is a
charge so incumbent on parents for their children's good, that
nothing can absolve them from taking care of it: and though the
power of commanding and chastising them go along with it, yet
God hath woven into the principles of human nature such a
tenderness for their off-spring, that there is little fear that
parents should use their power with too much rigour; the excess
is seldom on the severe side, the strong byass of nature drawing
the other way.
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