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And therefore, although our righteous fathers had slaves, and
administered their domestic affairs so as to distinguish between the
condition of slaves and the heirship of sons in regard to the blessings
of this life, yet in regard to the worship of God, in whom we hope
for eternal blessings, they took an equally loving oversight of all the
members of their household. And this is so much in accordance with the
natural order, that the head of the household was called
paterfamilias; and this name has been so generally accepted, that even
those whose rule is unrighteous are glad to apply it to themselves.
But those who are true fathers of their households desire and endeavor
that all the members of their household, equally with their own
children, should worship and win God, and should come to that
heavenly home in which the duty of ruling men is no longer necessary,
because the duty of caring for their everlasting happiness has also
ceased; but, until they reach that home, masters ought to feel their
position of authority a greater burden than servants their service.
And if any member of the family interrupts the domestic peace by
disobedience, he is corrected either by word or blow, or some kind of
just and legitimate punishment, such as society permits, that he may
himself be the better for it, and be readjusted to the family harmony
from which he had dislocated himself. For as it is not benevolent to
give a man help at the expense of some greater benefit he might
receive, so it is not innocent to spare a man at the risk of his
falling into graver sin. To be innocent, we must not only do harm to
no man, but also restrain him from sin or punish his sin, so that
either the man himself who is punished may profit by his experience, or
others be warned by his example. Since, then, the house ought to be
the beginning or element of the city, and every beginning bears
reference to some end of its own kind, and every element to the
integrity of the whole of which it is an element, it follows plainly
enough that domestic peace has a relation to civic peace, in other
words, that the well-ordered concord of domestic obedience and
domestic rule has a relation to the well-ordered concord of civic
obedience and civic rule. And therefore it follows, further, that
the father of the family ought to frame his domestic rule in accordance
with the law of the city, so that the household may be in harmony with
the civic order.
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