loose to the disposure of his own will (because he knows no bounds to it,
has not understanding, its proper guide) but is continued under the
tuition and government of others, all the time his own understanding is
uncapable of that charge. And so lunatics and ideots are never set free
from the government of their parents; children, who are not as yet come
unto those years whereat they may have; and innocents which are excluded
by a natural defect from ever having; thirdly, madmen, which for the
present cannot possibly have the use of right reason to guide themselves,
have for their guide, the reason that guideth other men which are tutors
over them, to seek and procure their good for them, says Hooker, Eccl.
Pol. lib. i. sec. 7. All which seems no more than that duty, which God
and nature has laid on man, as well as other creatures, to preserve their
offspring, till they can be able to shift for themselves, and will scarce
amount to an instance or proof of parents regal authority.
Sec. 61. Thus we are born free, as we are born rational; not that we
have actually the exercise of either: age, that brings one, brings with
it the other too. And thus we see how natural freedom and subjection to
parents may consist together, and are both founded on the same
principle. A child is free by his father's title, by his father's
understanding, which is to govern him till he hath it of his own. The
freedom of a man at years of discretion, and the subjection of a child to
his parents, whilst yet short of that age, are so consistent, and so
distinguishable, that the most blinded contenders for monarchy, by right
of fatherhood, cannot miss this difference; the most obstinate cannot but
allow their consistency: for were their doctrine all true, were the right
heir of Adam now known, and by that title settled a monarch in his
throne, invested with all the absolute unlimited power Sir Robert Filmer
talks of; if he should die as soon as his heir were born, must not the
child, notwithstanding he were never so free, never so much sovereign, be
in subjection to his mother and nurse, to tutors and governors, till age