172 or disobedience to their parents. And like to this proceeding in Moses' law was the process in the Persian monarchy. For Ælian tells, that when Rhaco the Mardian brought Cartomes his son with his hands bound behind him to Artaxerxes, desiring that the prince would command him to be slain, because he was imprudent, he was naught, he was a villain; the Persian king asked him if he could find in his heart to see his son die with violence. The father replied, I have in my garden a goodly lettuce, fat and wanton and full of leaves. When I find any of them luxuriant, proud and exorbitant, though it be a part of the body I cut it off; and so I do to whatsoever is bitter and superfluous; and my lettuce is the sweeter for it: it does not bewail the loss of its bad leaves but thrives the better. Think the same of me, O king; for though he be pared away that hurts my family, that gives ill example to his brothers, my stock will be the more thriving, florid, and fruitful, in all good things.' By this instance we perceive, that when fathers had not power to put to death their rebellious children, they could require it of the prince, who was to proceed summarily, and merely upon the father's instance. And we find in the French annals, that Stephen Boslee, the president of Paris, impaled a young fellow, because his mother said that she could, by no arts or labour, keep him from being a thief. 3. But this went off very much in the manners of men; and children were, by other means, restrained ordinarily, before things were brought to that extremity; and in the civil law 1, parents were forbidden to kill their children; and this law hath prevailed in all Christendom, excepting that a man is, in some places, permitted to kill his daughter, if he sees her in unchaste embraces. But instead of these great excesses of power, there is left to Christian parents nothing but a decent castigation in the lesser and single faults, and disinherison in case of great and persevering. That children are to submit to the animadversions and chastisements of their fathers is the voice of nature, and of all nations, of Scripture and right reason. So St. Paul m; "We have had fathers if our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: and Ben Sirach n teaches us, "In opere et sermone et omni 1 Sect. final. inst. de noxa. lib. Divus. ff. ad leg. Pomp. de Parricid. et toto tit. cap. de his qui Parent. vel vil. occid. Heb. xii. 9. m n Ecclus. iii. 8. patientia honora patrem tuum;" "Honour thy father in thy work and in thy word, and in all patience;" so the Vulgar Latin reads it; that is, suffer what he imposes upon you. And this was it which the young Greek that Plutarch speaks of, had learned in Zeno's school, "Didici patris iram ferre:" "I have learned (saith he) patiently to bear my father's anger." The authority is plain; the measures of it are only, that it be done for amendment; that is, that it be discipline, not anger and revenge, and that it be done with charity and moderation, which is signified by St. Paulo; "Parents, provoke not your children to wrath;" which precept he repeats: Mŋ ἐρεθίζετε, μὴ παροργίζετε, give them no opprobrious words, no contumelious and provoking language, and therefore much less, any cruel and indecent castigations. Pudore et liberalitate liberos Retinere satius esse credo, quam metu.-- A master governs by fear, and a father by love, and both by their authority but the gentle way is the father's method; but if he will use the severe, he hath authority to do it; and right or wrong, he must be suffered, till the evil be insufferable, and then he may decline it, but ever with reverence to his father's honour :-for indeed against a father's tyranny there is no aid, no remedy, no intercession, but by an appeal to the common father, the chief of all the tribes and all the families. This only I am to add, that as fathers have not a power of life and death over their children, so neither are they lightly to use that power which they have, and is next to this, that is, that I may use St. Ambrose's expression, "ne læsa pietas patris ulciscatur se exhæredatione vel abdicatione contumacis generis;" a power of disinherison is not to be used for every great offence, much less for a little. "Pater, nisi magnæ et multæ injuriæ patientiam evicerint, nisi plus est quod timet quam quod damnat, non accedit ad decretorium stilum," said Senecar; "A father will not easily o Ephes. vi. 4. Coloss. iii. 21. P Adelph, act. 1. sc. 1. 49. Westerhov. vol. p. 665. 9 Lib. 5. epist. 20. Lib. 1. cap. 14. de Clement. Ruhkopf, vol. 1. pag. 459. proceed to an exterminating sentence, unless great and many injuries have quite overcome his patience. Nor then neither, unless he fear worse things than those which he already blames."-For, as Quintilian observed well, this power was not given to fathers but when their sons are incorrigible: "Fulmen istud patrum adversus ferociam adolescentiæ datum est, adversus filios qui peccare plus possunt:" If they will sin yet more, and will not be corrected, then they may unwillingly use this thunderbolt. It is like the sentence of excommunication, never to be used, but when nothing else will cure the man, and nothing at all will make the mischief tolerable: that is, a son may not be disinherited, but when he may be hated,-which may never be, "sine causis multis, magnis et necessariis," as Cicero affirms; the causes must be great and many,' and intolerable and without remedy. But of these things because the fathers are judges, they must judge according to the permissions of law, and the analogies of Christian prudence and charity; for if they do amiss, the child is miserable by the father's passion, and the father by his own. Of Piety to Parents. RULE III. A Father hath Power over the Goods and Persons of his Children, so as to be maintained by them. 1. THE lawyers u define the paternal power to be "jus moribus legibusque constitutum, quo patri in filium bonaque ipsius plenum jus olim tributum fuit;" "a full right upon his son and his son's goods introduced by laws and customs."— Now this full right is alterable by the civil law of any nation : than is, whereas amongst the Romans whatsoever the son acquired, he acquired it not for himself, but for his father; this may determine sooner or last longer, according to the appointments of law, for "the heir, so long as he is a child, differs nothing from a servant," and therefore if the law please, Orat. pro Rosc. Amer. s Declam. 259. u Sebast. Monticul. de Patria potest. may be used accordingly: and, when the law hath so appointed, the conscience is bound by it. 2. But that which is not alterable by laws, is that, which is the natural and necessary duty, that parents be maintained by their children, if they need it: for this is in the commandment, this is a part of the honour that is due to them. For so our blessed Saviour remarks the dvrieσis: the Pharisees that taught the children to cry Corban,' It is a gift, and therefore out of it the parents must not be profited, he calls it "a not honouring the father and mother;" and "the double honour," which St. Pauly commands to be given to "the elders, that rule well," is instanced in the matter of maintenance. And this the heathens had. So Hierocles 2; Γονέας τιμήσομεν ὑπερβαλλόντως, σώματος ὑπηρεσίαν καὶ χρημάτων χορηγίαν αὐτοῖς ὑπέχοντες ὅτι μάλιστα προθυμοτάτην, 6 Let us greatly honour our parents, affording them the ministry of our bodies and the use of our wealth most cheerfully." But this Cicero a limits to the "necessaria vitæ præsidia, quæ debentur iis maxime," "the necessary aids of life:" that is, "what is for their support, to keep them from need and shame, according to the quality of the parent and ability of the child: so that this be first respected, and then that," saith Bartolus. To this purpose is that of St. Ambrose ": "If the contumely of the father, and the reproaching or vilifying of the mother, be punished so severely, what shall their starving or their beggary be?" This the Romans did resent so deeply, that they made a law, that, if a son that was emancipated or quitted from his father's government, did deny aliment to his indigent father, he was to be reduced. under his father's power, and so to abide for ever. But by this instance it is apparent, that this is no part of the father's power, but is an office of the son's piety. For between the father and the son, there is a threefold cord or tie, as I have already observed,-the band of reverence, of castigation, and piety; the two first are the father's authority; this last gives the father properly no right, but obliges the son directly. But then this is to be added, that this obligation is only con firmed by the civil laws, but it is immediately tied upon him by the natural: for a son is bound to keep his father from starving, though he be a bandit, or an outlaw, that is, though he have lost all civil rights, because no civil power can prejudice a divine commandment. Plutarche tells, that, by Solon's law, the son was not bound to give his father aliment, if his father caused him to learn no trade, or taught him nothing, whereby he might get his living. Indeed if the father neither did give him whereon to live, nor teach him whereby he might get it himself, the son is the less obliged; but yet sufficiently for this, because it is, by a law of nature, that he is obliged, and all such obligations are before such conditions can intervene. Πῶς ἂν ὁ γεννηθεὶς ἀντιγεννῆσαι dúvaιTO TOÙS σTeigavras, said Aristotle. Something else is to be considered besides the advantages of education: the father was the principle of his being, and in that he can never be requited in kind, and therefore let him be paid by duty. 3. But if the case be such as divides the duty, and the money cannot be divided, what shall then be done? Marco Tomaso, a tradesman in Venice, had a father and a son, both lame, both in great necessity. The father lost all his goods to the Turks, and the son had rowed in the galleys, till all his strength and health were gone; but the poor cutler (for Tomaso was no more) was not able to relieve them both: what shall he do? the case here is hard. But love descends, and ascends not: therefore Tomaso's bowels yearn upon his son; and he cannot have that tenderness for his father; and he were unnatural, if he should let his son perish, it is true but therefore he ought not to neglect his father, and feed his son, because his son does not, cannot, love him as his father does: and therefore he is obliged by gratitude to his father, and by tenderness to his son; to this there is more natural inclination, but to the other there is more natural duty. And therefore the lawyers say, that 'amor descendit' is to be understood 'quoad ordinem dilectionis, non quoad effectum obligationis.' Love does descend, but it should not in some cases. And therefore when the law gives leave, that a son may, by his father, be sold to keep the father from starving, it shows plainly, that the father is, in cases of necessity, to be preferred. d Lib. Unic. cap. de Ingrat. Liber. e In Vita Solon. |