moral perfections, when we fay, that God is wife, and juft, and good, and eternally and unalterably fo; we mean, at least, that God is not a foolish, unrighteous, evil, and cruel Being; and therefore muft fuppofe that the difference between wifdom and folly, juftice and injuftice, evil and good, cruelty and mercy, is abfolutely eternal and unalterable as God himself, of whom we affirm the one and deny the other; and therefore is not owing to his willing that it should be fo, nor alterable at his pleasure, nor dependent on him for its continuance; for if the diftinction between these moral entities or objects was merely arbitrary, and originally the refult only of the will of God, it can never be affirmed of him that he is eternally and immutably the one and not the other. For upon this fuppofition he was not true, or juft, or good, till he willed to be fo, and might have been weak, unjuft, and evil, by a like determination of his will; if there be no effential immutable difference in the things themfelves. Nor can there be any poffible certainty of God's continuing for the future to be wife, and juft, and good, and not the contrary; for if there be no other difference between the one and the other, but what the will of God hath constituted; that will ceafing, or altering thefe diftinctions, in confequence must ceafe or alter, and God may be evil instead of good, or rather good and evil at the fame time; which is an evident abfurdity and contradiction.

On these accounts, fays our author, I apprehend it plainly appears, that the very notion of God implies the neceffary, effential, immutable, and independent difference between moral good and evil; and, indeed, without this fuppofition, we could have no fure and fixed rule of action to ourselves as reasonable creatures; for if piety, juftice, charity, and the like virtues, are the creatures of mere power, and the precarious effects of abfolute will and pleasure, power and will may immediately alter them, cancel men's obligations to

regard

regard them; and fubftitute in the room of them impiety, injuftice and cruelty, as the great obligations and duties of human nature *.

Again, moral good and evil are a kind of relative terms, that is, they do fuppofe, either in idea or actual existence, certain reasonable beings, and certain relations in which they ftand to each other. Before ever the creation was formed, God was in and of himself poffeffed of infinite perfection, of all that power and wisdom, which could not but exert themselves in all acts of justice and goodness to his creatures. After their being brought in actual existence, the original fitness of which conduct towards them was clearly difcerned by God; whilft they were yet only prefent in idea to his mind, and arofe from thofe apprehended relations which were actually in time to fubfift between God and them. And as God had nothing to determine him in the formation of the world, but the direction of his own infinite understanding and wifdom, he was undoubtedly at liberty to form what fyftems of beings he thought proper.

When, indeed, God had actually given being to reasonable creatures of fuch particular capacities and circumftances, their relations to each other; then, the fitnefs and obligations of thofe duties refulting from them, became certain and neceffary, and were no longer dependent on the will of God, whether they fhould carry in them any reasonable obligation or not; and when they became the matter of an immediate divine command, they were not thereforé reafonable only becaufe commanded, but commanded because naturally and antecedently reafonable. And the reafon of this is evident, because the fitness and unfitnefs of moral good and evil, are as neceffary and certain, as the natural and original difference between them. This, therefore, must be

* Vid. Cicer. de Legibus, 1. 1. c. 16.

See Dr. Samuel Clarke on the unchangeable Obligation of Natural Religion, p. 50 & feq.

VOL. I.

b

the

the fupreme, immutable and univerfal rule of action to all reasonable beings whatsoever. It is the one certain and unerring rule of the Divine conduct, and confequently the most certain, the most amiable, and worthy rule of action to every reasonable creature *.

And the evident tendency of virtue, fays another ingenious author, is not only the private happiness of fingle perfons, but the good of the whole human kind; an univerfal benevolence links us together, and interefts every one of us in the affairs of another, fo far as to defire and endeavour their fafety and happiness, not inconfiftently with our own. There are other particular determinations of the virtuous kind, fuch as compaffion, natural affection, gratitude, and the love of our country, fo confeffedly natural to men, as by common consent to obtain the name of humanity; but fo prevalent in fome as to put them upon the most selfdenying and hazardous enterprizes for the good of others, and take the highest pleasure when they fee the effect of them promote a general good +.

When we confider the conftitution of human nature, with all its powers, affections, and principles of action, as the work of God; then that fenfe of right and wrong of moral good and evil, which is the great dif tinction of mankind from all the inferior orders, appeareth to demand particular notice; as being not only in itself confidered, the highest and most important faculty of the mind, but as what is given us for directing our conduct, and as what principally pointeth out to man his chief end, and that which is his fupreme good. That the fenfe of right and wrong must have been intended by the Author of our beings as a law or rule for directing our conduct, is evident; for it is impoffible to feparate a fenfe of right and a fenfe of

**

See this more largely treated of in Doctor Chandler's Discourse, before cited.

† Abernethy, on the Unity of God, proved from the apparent Unity of Defign in his Works. Syftem, p. 91.

obligation.

obligation. A thing is right, therefore it is to be done; a thing is wrong, therefore it is not to be done; is the original law or language of nature, with which every man is acquainted; and while the fenfe of right and wrong remaineth, the heart inftantly and neceffarily approveth what appeareth to be right, and condemneth what it judgeth to be wrong

But it is an inquiry of the utmost moment to virtue and to human happiness, how the Creator is difpofed and affected towards his creatures, as they observe it, or deviate from it in their actions. It may be imagined, and this appeareth plainly to have been the fenfe of fome perfons, that though the univerfe, and all the creatures in it, are the work of an original intelligent cause, perfectly wife, powerful, and beneficent; and the whole creation is governed by the fole fuperintending providence of this being, and particularly, that all the inftincts and affections planted in the heart of man, are his workmanship; yet he doth not attend at all to the temper or behaviour of men, as being according to the moral quality of them, the objects of his approbation or difpleasure that, though he hath given to his creatures, the fenfe of good and evil, of right and wrong, as a means of ferving those purposes by them which he had in view; yet he himself hath not that regard to right and wrong, which we find in our own minds, nor any thing analogous; and therefore he is not difpleased with the tranfgreffion of this law of our nature, nor hath any pleasure or complacency in our obedience, and that we are never to expect any interpofition of his, to give us tokens of his favour, for having pursued that which is right, or of his difpleafure, for having done what is wrong: that men are by the laws of nature thoroughly furnished for ferving the purposes of this life; but that this is all that is

* Duchal on God's Moral Government. Syftem, p. 313. And Doctor Fofter on Natural Religion and Social Virtue, vol. II. p. 12.

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to

to be expected, and that by eftablishing and maintaining this conftitution of things, the Creator hath made provision for preferving the world in that state which will anfwer his original design.

Very widely different from this way of thinking is the fenfe of thofe who confider the fupreme Being as a lawgiver, and a moral governor, in the proper fenfe of the word; believing, that as he hath, in the sense of right and wrong, written a law upon the heart of every man, and hath planted in every man a conscience to approve or difapprove of his actions, as they are good or evil; fo he is himself attentive to the conduct of every individual, is pleafed with the conformity of his temper and actions to the law that he hath given him, and difpleafed with the tranfgreffors of it, and will interpofe to teftify his pleasure or difpleasure by fuch rewards and punishments as perfect wisdom fhall fee fit and neceffary to answer the end of a moral administration; that though God doth not interpofe in the present state of things by any acts of his, so as fully to answer what reafon ultimately expecteth from a perfect moral ruler, in rewarding the good, and punishing the bad; yet another ftate of things is to be expected, in which the great defign of his moral administration fhall be perfected, and he, as judge of the world, will do right to every subject of his moral kingdom.

I cannot better close the preceding remarks on natural religion, and thereby introduce the advantages of a revelation, than with the teftimony of Dr. Middleton, in relation to the religious and moral sentiments of Cicero, the greateft Heathen philofopher, whose ideas were probably the moft refined of any man unaffifted by revelation.

The Doctor, having obferved that the fcheme of morality profeffed by Cicero was certainly the most complete that the Gentile world had ever been ac

quainted