and education brought him reason and ability to govern himself and
others? The necessities of his life, the health of his body, and the
information of his mind, would require him to be directed by the will of
others, and not his own; and yet will any one think, that this restraint
and subjection were inconsistent with, or spoiled him of that liberty or
sovereignty he had a right to, or gave away his empire to those who had
the government of his nonage? This government over him only prepared him
the better and sooner for it. If any body should ask me, when my son is
of age to be free? I shall answer, just when his monarch is of age to
govern. But at what time, says the judicious Hooker, Eccl. Pol. l. i.
sect. 6. a man may be said to have attained so far forth the use of
reason, as sufficeth to make him capable of those laws whereby he is then
bound to guide his actions: this is a great deal more easy for sense to
discern, than for any one by skill and learning to determine.
Sec. 62. Common-wealths themselves take notice of, and allow, that
there is a time when men are to begin to act like free men, and therefore
till that time require not oaths of fealty, or allegiance, or other
public owning of, or submission to the government of their countries.
Sec. 63. The freedom then of man, and liberty of acting according to
his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is able to instruct
him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know how far he
is left to the freedom of his own will. To turn him loose to an
unrestrained liberty, before he has reason to guide him, is not the
allowing him the privilege of his nature to be free; but to thrust him
out amongst brutes, and abandon him to a state as wretched, and as much
beneath that of a man, as their's. This is that which puts the authority
into the parents hands to govern the minority of their children. God
hath made it their business to employ this care on their offspring, and
hath placed in them suitable inclinations of tenderness and concern to
temper this power, to apply it, as his wisdom designed it, to the