one to speak thus: Then, is that man to be
called obedient who shall follow evil guidance as well as he who shall
believe the good? I reply that this would not be obedience, but
transgression. For if the King should issue a command in one way and
the servant give forth the command in another, it would not be right
to obey the servant, for that would be to disobey the King; and thus
it would be transgression. And therefore Solomon says, when he intends
to correct his son, and this is his first commandment: "Listen, my
son, to the instruction of thy father." And then he seeks to remove
him immediately from the counsel and teaching of the wicked man,
saying, "My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not."

Wherefore, as soon as he is born, the son clings to the breast of the
mother; even so soon as some light of the Mind appears in him, he
ought to turn to the correction of the father, and the father to
instruction. And let the father take heed that he himself does not set
him an example in work or action that is contrary to the words of the
correction; for naturally we see each son look more to the footprints
of the paternal feet than to those of other men. And therefore the
Law, which provides for this, says and commands that the life of the
father should appear to his sons always honourable and upright. Thus
it appears that obedience was necessary in this age; and therefore
Solomon writes in the Book of Proverbs, that he who humbly and
obediently sustains his just reproofs from the corrector shall be
glorious. And he says "shall be," to cause men to understand that he
speaks to the adolescent, who cannot be so in his present age. And if
any one should reflect on me because I have said obedience is due to
the father and not to other men, I say that to the father all other
obedience ought to be referred; wherefore the Apostle says to the
Colossians: "Sons, obey your fathers in all things, for such is the
will of God." And if the father be not in this life, the son ought to
refer to that which is said by the father in his last Will as a
father; and if the father die intestate, the son ought to refer to him
to whom the Law commits his authority; and then ought the masters and
elders to be obeyed, for this appears to be a reasonable charge laid
upon the son by the father, or by him who stands in the father's
place.

But because this present chapter has been long, on account of the
useful digressions which it contains,