1. Parental authority is threefold, legislative, judicial and executive.
The two latter we shall more fully consider under the head of
home-discipline. The legislative authority of the parent is confined to the
development of God's laws for the Christian home. He cannot enact arbitrary
laws. His authority is founded on his relation to his children as the
author of their being; "yet it does not admit," says Schlegel, "of being
set forth and comprised in any exact and positive formularies." It does
not, as in the old Roman law, concede to the parent the power over the life
of the child. This would not only violate the law of natural affection, but
would be an amalgamation of the family and state. Neither is the parental
authority merely conventional, given to the parent by the state as a
policy. It is no civil or political investiture, making the parent a
delegated civil ruler; but comes from God as an in alienable right, and
independent, as such, of the state. It does not, therefore, rest upon civil
legislation, but has its foundation in human nature and the revealed law of
God; neither can the state legislate upon it, except in cases where its
exercise becomes an infringement upon the prerogatives of the state itself.
Parents are magistrates under God, and, as His stewards, cannot abdicate
their authority, nor delegate it to another. Neither can they be tyrants in
the exercise of it.
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