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 children's good
as long as they should need to be under it.
64. But what reason can hence advance this care of the parents due
to their offspring into an absolute, arbitrary dominion of the father,
whose power reaches no farther than by such a discipline as he finds
most effectual to give such strength and health to their bodies,
such vigour and rectitude to their minds, as may best fit his children
to be most useful to themselves and others, and, if it be necessary to
his condition, to make them work when they are able for their own
subsistence; but in this power the mother, too, has her share with the
father.
65. Nay, this power so little belongs to the father by any
peculiar right of Nature, but only as he is guardian of his
children, that when he quits his care of them he loses his power
over them, which goes along with their nourishment and education, to
which it is inseparably annexed, and belongs as much to the
foster-father of an exposed child as to the natural father of another.
Pages:
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66