Two Treatises Government John Locke - Faculty of Social Sciences ...

42/John Lockeand then resolve at any rate to defend then; and so do with the words andsense of authors, they would fit to their purpose, just as Procrustes didwith his guests, lop or stretch them, as clay best fit them to the size oftheir notions; and they always prove, like those so served, deformed,lame, and useless.§61. For had our author set down this command without garbling,as God gave it, and joined another to father, every reader would haveseen, that it had made directly against him, and that it was so far fromestablishing the “monarchical power of the father,” that it set up themother equal with him, and enjoined zing but was due In common toboth father and mother: for that is the constant tenour of the Scripture.“Honour thy father and thy another,” Exod. xx. “He that smiteth hisfather or mother, shall surely be put to death, xx. 15. “He that cursethhis father or mother, shall surely be put to death,” ver. 17. repeated Lev.xx 9, and by our Saviour, Matth. xv. 4. “Ye shall fear every man hismother and his father,” Lev. xix. 3. “If any man have a rebellious son,which will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother;then shall his father and his mother lay hold an him, and say, This ourson is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice,” Deut. xxi.18, 19, 20, 21. “Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or hismother,” xxvii. 16. “My son, hear the instructions of thy father, andforsake not the law of thy mother,” are the words of Solomon, a kingwho was not ignorant of what belonged to him as a father or a king; andyet he joins father and mother together, in all the instructions he giveschildren quite through his book of Proverbs. “Woe unto him, that saithunto his father, What begettest thou? or to the woman, What hast thoubrought forth?” Isa. xiv. 10. “In thee have they set light by father andmother,” Ezeli. xxii. 7. “And it shall come to pass, that when any shallyet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall sayunto him, Thou shalt not live; and his father anti his mother that begathim shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.” Zech. xiii. 3. Herenot the father only, but the father and mother jointly, had power in thiscase of life and death. Thus ran the law of the Old Testament, and in theNew they are likewise joined, in the obedience of their children, Eph. vi.1. The rule is, “Children, obey your parents;” and 1 do not remember,that I any where read, “Children, obey your father,” and no more: theScripture joins mother too in that homage which is due from children;and had there been any text, where the honour or obedience of childrenhad been directed to the father alone, it is not likely that our author, who