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better, after suffering it to be ruffled by the contrary reason-' ings of others.

Dech. That is the case; for although you and I are still firmly attached to our old opinions, yet, let the inconsistency lie on which side it will, we cannot so easily find out arguments to convince each other, as each of us can to satisfy himself. Is it not very strange, that mere nature should, on all occasions, and in all circumstances, tell us so plainly what is our duty, and enforce the performance of it with the most evident rewards and punishments, and yet that her dictates should not be laws, for want of a known authority? I cannot help thinking, that the being, and power of God over us, are as clearly revealed to us by nature, as the rules of our behaviour. The former lie as open to reason, as the latter. But if the dictates of sentiment and reason are not, in the strict sense of the word, to be admitted for laws, till God is known, and they are believed to be his dictates; yet they are certainly moral rules of action, binding us to the performance of these, and hindering us from the committal of those actions; and therefore they are laws, though of a different definition from the laws of men. As our inquiry turns not on names, but on things, if reason and nature on all occasions prescribe and enforce our duty, that is enough, and we need not take up time in settling the meaning of a word, which every one is at liberty to define, according to his own way of thinking.

Shep I shall readily allow you, and every body else, a right to define your own words, as you, or he, may think fit. Let us, however, have a law, or a rule of action, an instinct, a reason, or what you please, to act by; but let it be sufficiently clear and cogent, to answer the end. I have already said enough, I think, to shew there can be no law, properly speaking, nor moral obligation, without the knowledge of God. I have likewise shewn, from the nature of our ideas themselves, from our manner of coming by them, from the office and extent of reason, and from the theological errors and ignorance of all unenlightened ages and countries, that since the fall, in order rightly and effectually to know God, revelation is absolutely necessary, at least to the bulk of mankind.

Dech. If our duty on all occasions is sufficiently known

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and enforced, without instructions, or traditions, or even without a knowledge of God, this may suffice. As to revelation, it can only give us general rules for our moral conduct. It is reason that must interpret those rules, and apply them to particular cases. But reason can dictate, as well as interpret; and is at less trouble, and under less uncertainty, in applying her own, than foreign rules. If we must be taught to reason, which to me is a strange position, to say no worse of it, mankind, by comparing and debating, can teach one another, and improve their reason. Those in whom reason is the least improved, have a simpler and plainer set of duties, than those whose faculties are more refined; and the improvement of reason keeps pace exactly with the calls for it. Place a man in what circumstances you will, and his reason will tell him how he is to act. knows very well what he would not desire to have done to himself; and that he must be sensible is not to be done to another. Crimes of the deepest dye, such as robbery and murder, are naturally attended with great abhorrence in all men, before committal, and with strong remorse afterward. Lesser crimes are accompanied with proportionable aversion and compunction, as the necessity of abstaining from them is not so great. The rules for positive duties are as plain, and their enforcements as strong, as in the case of negative. The reason of every man tells him what is a good, and what an evil action; and no man does a good action, but he finds a sensible pleasure in doing it; no man commits a bad one, who does not feel the stings of conscience, and a sense of guilt, for so doing; and as good actions, and their rewards, as well as evil ones, and their punishments, ought to bear proportion to each other, so the aforesaid pleasure and compunction are always proportionable to the good or evil of our actions. Moral duties are upon the same footing with self-evident propositions. As the one sort bring their own light, so the other carry their obligation with them, and need not be taught. No man, for instance, need be told, that he ought to save the life of his fellow-creatures when he can do it with safety to his own; or, that he ought not unnecessarily aggrieve or destroy another. The fitnesses of things are, in most cases, self-evident, and the duties resulting from thence too plain to be doubted of by the

meanest understanding. In nicer cases the reasons of duty are not hard to be deduced, and the duty itself is of less importance. Were it necessary to teach us moral rules and obligations, the author of our nature, who never employs two causes or means to effect that, which may be brought about by one, would never have conveyed that moral knowledge to us by sentiment and reason, which he intended to have instructed us in another way.

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Shep. Two points you have here endeavoured to establish; first, that the rules of our duty are evident to all men, without instruction; and secondly, that they are sufficiently enforced by nature alone. Supposing the first to be true, although I can easily account for a man's acting, on particular occasions, directly against what other men may take to be his duty, yet I can by no means account for his ever acting wrong, in important cases, upon principle. Much less am I able to satisfy myself, upon your principle, how it should come to pass, that whole nations should have thought themselves obliged to act upon opposite principles, in relation to life, death, property, &c. Timoleon killed his own brother in the life-time of their mother, in order to set the Corinthians free. This he took to be his duty; and the generality of mankind, placed in his circumstances, would have thought that action an horrid crime. Cato killed himself, and, no doubt, thought he had a right to do so; yet the generality of mankind looked on the action as a sin against his own nature and the community, which never stood more in need of his services, than at the critical juncture, when he thought fit to desert it. Mr. Blount, who wrote the Oracles of Reason, shot himself, because his sister-in-law would not marry him. In this he acted on principle, as well as Acosta, who put an end to his life by the same sort of instrument. If the bulk of mankind did not act on other sentiments of duty, we should have but a thin world of it. All true Christians, and I hope I may add the Deists, think the Jews and Pagans were guilty of great cruelty in their persecutions of the ancient Christians. Yet, immoral and barbarous as their conduct seems to us, they thought they were doing good service to the cause of truth, and to the several objects of their worship. Papists think fire and fagot an excellent way of refuting Protestants, and hope to merit

heaven by a zeal hot enough to reduce their adversaries to ashes. This whole nations of them have taken to be their duty; witness the crusades against the Protestants in France, the massacre of Paris, that of Savoy, and that of Ireland in 1641. Now the Protestants, where they have the upper hand, think it their duty to treat the Papists, and all other recusants with lenity and forbearance. One nation of men think themselves obliged by nature to suckle and cherish their children with the greatest tenderness. Another think it unreasonable to bring up sickly infants to be a burden to themselves and the public, and therefore throw them, as soon as they are born, to the wild beasts. The people of one country think it their duty to prolong the lives of their parents with all imaginable affection and indulgence. Those of another put their parents to death, when they are become infirm and decrepit, and feast themselves on their flesh. Numberless instances of opposition about the most important points of moral duty, not only in particular persons, but between public communities, might be added to these; but these, I am sure, are sufficient to satisfy every rational thinker, that nature and reason do not, either by a self-evident light, or by indisputable deductions, tell every man how he ought to act, on all occasions, and in all circumstances. If the fitnesses of things were so apparent, or did our moral duties so evidently result from thence, as you seem to imagine, such glaring differences about matters of the greatest moment to private persons and societies, could never have happened. All mankind are taught from their infancy, and through the whole course of their lives, to look upon certain actions as right and fit, and on others as wicked or vile. Parents, masters, conversation, dealings, human laws, &c. all join to teach them this difference, and frequently instruct them to place the right of actions, and moral duty, on opposite sides. If this continual instruction, and the moral habits commencing from thence, and perpetually fed by it, were wholly removed, I cannot tell what would become of the moral sense; but I am afraid it would dwindle away almost to nothing; although I will readily grant, that an unbiassed head, and an uncorrupted heart, will of themselves distinguish between right and wrong, in very important cases. And you, I hope, will as freely con

fess, that were this distinction as clear, as strong, and permanent, as that which the eye makes between colours, which, to answer the whole purpose of morality, it ought to be, it could never yield to so gross a transposition of right and wrong, as in the instances just now mentioned. As we generally see men knowing or ignorant of moral, as well as other sorts of knowledge, allowing for the difference of capacity and application, in proportion to their opportunities, and the pains that have been taken in training them up; so we generally see them, making due allowances for difference of constitution and complexion, affected with greater or less degrees of love for virtue, and aversion to vice; nay, we often find them even fond of vice, and averse to virtue, avoiding the one with the utmost distaste, and pursuing the other with the greatest delight; and not only that, but reflecting on it, when over, not with remorse, but pleasure, according to the lessons that have been given them, examples set them, the company they have kept, and the course of life they have run through.

Dech. Do you mean by this, that actions are not, in themselves, good or evil; and that there is no natural morality; but that the whole depends upon opinion and instruction, which in different places may establish opposite rules of duty?

Shep. I mean that moral duty arises entirely from the known will of God; that it is always conformable to the known nature and fitness of things, excepting when God, on account of some superior fitness, unknown to us, orders it otherwise; in which case the fitness of the duty is to subsist only between the action and the express will of God; that this exercise of the Divine prerogative, in dispensing with inferior fitnesses, is to be esteemed by us as a moral miracle; and that neither the sentiments nor reason of man, assisted by all the mere natural knowledge he can have of the fitnesses of things, are able to give him a thorough view of his duty, which ought to be so clear by your hypothesis, as not only to teach him, in all cases and circumstances, what is right, but, also, perpetually to prevent his imbibing bad principles of morality, his confounding right and wrong, or taking the one for the other. I am as fully persuaded as you can be, that there is a law of nature; but the whole differ

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