father or guardian, who is to understand for him.  And if the 
father die, and fail to substitute a deputy in his trust; if he 
hath not provided a tutor, to govern his son, during his 
minority, during his want of understanding, the law takes care to 
do it; some other must govern him, and be a will to him, till he 

hath attained to a state of freedom, and his understanding be 
fit to take the government of his will.  But after that, the 
father and son are equally free as much as tutor and pupil 
after nonage; equally subjects of the same law together, without 
any dominion left in the father over the life, liberty, or estate 
of his son, whether they be only in the state and under the law 
of nature, or under the positive laws of an established 
government.

     Sec. 60.  But if, through defects that may happen out of the 
ordinary course of nature, any one comes not to such a degree of 
reason, wherein he might be supposed capable of knowing the law, 
and so living within the rules of it, he is never capable of 
being a free man, he is never let loose to the disposure of his 
own will (because he knows no bounds to it, has not 
understanding, its proper guide) but is continued under the 
tuition and government of others, all the time his own 
understanding is uncapable of that charge.  And so lunatics and 
ideots are never set free from the government of their parents; 
children, who are not as yet come unto those years whereat they 
may have; and innocents which are excluded by a natural defect 
from ever having; thirdly, madmen, which for the present cannot 
possibly have the use of right reason to guide themselves, have 
for their guide, the reason that guideth other men which are 
tutors over them, to seek and procure their good for them, says 
Hooker, Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sec. 7.  All which seems no more than 
that duty, which God and nature has laid on man, as well as other 
creatures, to preserve their offspring, till they can be able to 
shift for themselves, and will scarce amount to an instance or 
proof of parents regal authority.

     Sec. 61.  Thus we are born free, as we are born rational; 
not that we have actually the exercise of either: age, that 
brings one, brings with it the other too.  And thus we see how 
natural freedom and subjection to parents may consist together, 
and are both founded on the same principle.  A child is free 
by his father's title, by his father's understanding, which is to 
govern him till he hath it of his own.  The freedom of a man at 
years of discretion, and the subjection of a child to his 
parents, whilst yet short of that age, are so consistent, and 
so distinguishable, that the most blinded contenders for 
monarchy, by right of fatherhood, cannot miss this 
difference; the most obstinate cannot but allow their 
consistency: for were their doctrine all true, were the right 
heir of Adam now known, and by that title settled a monarch in 
his throne, invested with all the absolute unlimited power Sir 
Robert Filmer talks of; if he should die as soon as his heir 
were born, must not the child, notwithstanding he were never so 
free, never so much sovereign, be in subjection to his mother and 
nurse, to tutors and governors, till age 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 children's good, as long as they 
should need to be under it.

     Sec. 64.  But what reason can hence advance this care of the 
parents due to their off-spring 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