yet all this consists with the equality, which all men are in, 
in respect of jurisdiction or dominion one over another; which 
was the equality I there spoke of, as proper to the business in 
hand, being that equal right, that every man hath, to his 
natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or 
authority of any other man.

     Sec. 55.  Children, I confess, are not born in this full 
state of equality, though they are born to it.  Their parents 
have a sort of rule and jurisdiction over them, when they come 
into the world, and for some time after; but it is but a 
temporary one.  The bonds of this subjection are like the 
swaddling clothes they art wrapt up in, and supported by, in the 
weakness of their infancy: age and reason as they grow up, loosen 
them, till at length they drop quite off, and leave a man at his 
own free disposal.

     Sec. 56.  Adam was created a perfect man, his body and 
mind in full possession of their strength and reason, and so was 
capable, from the first instant of his being to provide for his 
own support and preservation, and govern his actions according to 
the dictates of the law of reason which God had implanted in him.  
From him the world is peopled with his descendants, who are all 
born infants, weak and helpless, without knowledge or 
understanding: but to supply the defects of this imperfect state, 
till the improvement of growth and age hath removed them, Adam 
and Eve, and after them all parents were, by the law of 
nature, under an obligation to preserve, nourish, and educate 
the children they had begotten; not as their own workmanship, 
but the workmanship of their own maker, the Almighty, to whom 
they were to be accountable for them.

     Sec. 57.  The law, that was to govern Adam, was the same 
that was to govern all his posterity, the law of reason.  But 
his offspring having another way of entrance into the world, 
different from him, by a natural birth, that produced them 

ignorant and without the use of reason, they were not presently 
under that law; for no body can be under a law, which is not 
promulgated to him; and this law being promulgated or made known 
by reason only, he that is not come to the use of his reason, 
cannot be said to be under this law; and Adam's children, 
being not presently as soon as born under this law of reason, 
were not presently free: for law, in its true notion, is 
not so much the limitation as the direction of a free and 
intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no 
farther than is for the general good of those under that law: 
could they be happier without it, the law, as an useless thing, 
would of itself vanish; and that ill deserves the name of 
confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and precipices.  So 
that, however it may be mistaken, the end of law is not to 
abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for 
in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there 
is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free 
from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where 
there is no law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty 
for every man to do what he lists: (for who could be free, when 
every other man's humour might domineer over him?) but a 
liberty to dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions, 
possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of 
those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to 
the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.

     Sec. 58.  The power, then, that parents have over their 
children, arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to 
take care of their off-spring, during the imperfect state of 
childhood.  To inform the mind, and govern the actions of their 
yet ignorant nonage, till reason shall take its place, and ease 
them of that trouble, is what the children want, and the parents 
are bound to: for God having given man an understanding to direct 
his actions, has allowed him a freedom of will, and liberty of 
acting, as properly belonging thereunto, within the bounds of 
that law he is under.  But whilst he is in an estate, wherein he 
has not understanding of his own to direct his will, he is 
not to have any will of his own to follow: he that 
understands for him, must will for him too; he must prescribe 
to his will, and regulate his actions; but when he comes to the 
estate that made his father a freeman, the son is a freeman 
too.

     Sec. 59.  This holds in all the laws a man is under, whether 
natural or civil.  Is a man under the law of nature?  What made 
him free of that law?  what gave him a free disposing of his 
property, according to his own will, within the compass of that 
law?  I answer, a state of maturity wherein he might be supposed 
capable to know that law, that so he might keep his actions 
within the bounds of it.  When he has acquired that state, he is 
presumed to know how far that law is to be his guide, and how far 
he may make use of his freedom, and so comes to have it; till 
then, some body else must guide him, who is presumed to know how 
far the law allows a liberty.  If such a state of reason, such an 
age of discretion made him free, the same shall make his son 
free too.  Is a man under the law of England?  What made him 
free of that law? that is, to have the liberty to dispose of his 
actions and possessions according to his own will, within the 
permission of that law?  A capacity of knowing that law; which is 
supposed by that law, at the age of one and twenty years, and in 
some cases sooner.  If this made the father free, it shall 
make the son free too.  Till then we see the law allows the 
son to have no will, but he is to be guided by the will of his