I have here attempted a compendious sketch of the general office of REASON in the province of Morality. From the interest which the human mind must naturally and neceffarily take in the confequence of moral action as the criterion of its happiness, this has been a fubject of more general investigation, in every age, than any other. The old philofophers honoured it with a particular regard. Socrates, the father of the ancient moralifts, was faid, on that account, to have brought Philofophy down from heaven, and to have introduced her into the fociety of men. And he enhanced his worth and dignity as a philofopher, in the estimation of the Roman orator, by relinquishing Physical studies, of which the ancients, from a wrong method of purfuit, were mainly ignorant, in order to devote his attention to morality alone, Xe

• Primus Philofophiam devocavit e cœlo, et in urbibus collocavit, et in domos etiam introduxit. Cic. Tufc. Quæft. lib. v.

• Socrates mihi videtur primus a rebus occultis et ab ipfa natura involutis, in quibus omnes ante eum philofophi occupati fuerant, evoluiffe Philofophiam, et ad vitam com

munem

nophon and Plato have delivered the precepts of their divine mafter in a familiar and inftructive manner, characteristic of the dignity and fimplicity of his exalted mind. And Ariftotle, the disciple of the laft, collected the Ethics of antiquity, and arranged them into a clear and lucid fyftem. He has drawn all the Virtues with great exactness of truth, and nicety of diftinction; and has treated the whole fubject of Ethics in a concife, elegant, didactic ftyle. When we confider the extent and variety of his ftudies, the relative disadvantages under which he laboured, and the age in which he lived; when we view this great moralift as unacquainted with that evangelical Virtue, by whofe diviner maxims future moralifts have advantaged, but which did not appear upon this terreftrial stage till two centuries after his departure; we cannot look up to his fyftem of morality, both as to the purity of its maxims, the value of its collection, and the juftness of

munem advexiffe, ut de virtutibus et vitiis omninoque de benis rebus et malis quæreret. Ibid. Acad. lib. i.

its arrangement, without a mixture of the profoundest love and admiration.

Many and valuable are the precepts of these fages of antiquity, and, though sometimes defective as to their matter, on account of the falfe or partial principle of Moral Obligation from which they fprung, both the method and the style in which they are delivered, form admirable models of all future imitation. Their defects were owing to the feparation which they made of the THREE great and fundamental truths, on the inviolable

Would our moralifts and divines imitate, in their writings, the method of the Peripatetic in his moral works, inftead of eternally retailing the fame partial moralizings and infignificant obfervations, and too often spoiling the little merit hey poffefs by a pitiful attempt to amuse weak and fhallow minds with a contemptible mixture of false pathos and enthefiaftic cant; our pulpits and our presses would not be inflantly labouring with things called Sermons and Moral days, full of nothing but ftale indigefted fragments, infignicant obfervation, and incoherent

trash.

f And, had the celebrated Author of the Rambler ftudied Plato and the Nicomachean Ethics with the attention and admiration they deferve, and imitated, in his excellent didactic exays, the pure fimplicity of their ftyle; that of the English language would have been at this day more chafe and elegant, in proportion as it would, probably, have been lefs fonorous and redundant

union of which all moral reafoning should be
grounded, Plato having been exclufively the
patron of one, Ariftotle of another, and Zeno 3 d
of the third; and in not paying a just atten-
tion to the true origin and end of all moral
action, the Will and Attributes of God.

Some of our modern philofopers have not only neglected their virtues, but have imitated and outraged their faults, and that after a more perfect exemplar of morality had been received from heaven; who, in their eter'nal fquabbles about the true foundation of morality, and the obligation to its practice, have facrilegiously untwisted this THREE'FOLD CORD; and each running away with 'the part he esteemed strongest, hath affixed that to the throne of God, as the golden 'chain that is to unite and draw all to it'Thus a spirit of dispute and refinement hath 'fo entangled and confounded all our conclu'fions on a subject, in itself very clear and 'intelligible, that, were MORALITY herself, 'of which the ancients made a Goddess, to 'appear in perfon among men, and be quef'tioned concerning her birth, he would be theck pastily which tempted

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tempted to anfwer as Homer does in Lucian, that her commentators had fo learnedly 'embarraffed the difpute, that she was now as much at a lofs as they to account for her

g original.' And thus have men, borne away by a fondness to their own idle fyftems, prefumptuously broken in upon that TRI'PLE BARRIER, with which God has been graciously pleased to cover and fecure Virtue, and given advantage to the cavils of libertines, and infidels; who on each of these Principles, thus advanced on the • ruins of the other two, have reciprocally forged a scheme of Religion independent

of Morality; and a scheme of Morality independent of Religion; who, how dif⚫erent foever their employments may appear,

are indeed but twifting the fame cord at different ends: the plain defign of both being to overthrow RELIGION.'

See Warburton's Divine Legation of Mofes, Book 1, Sect. 4.

SECT.