being, and has been made capable of any enjoyments of life: from this
obligation no state, no freedom can absolve children. 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. And therefore God almighty when
he would express his gentle dealing with the Israelites, he tells them,
that though he chastened them, he chastened them as a man chastens his
son, Deut. viii. 5. i.e. with tenderness and affection, and kept them