or MORALS.

Moral Philosophy is "The science of manners or duty;" which it traces from man's nature and condition, and thence to terminate in his happiness. In other words, it is "The knowledge of our duty and felicity;" or, "The art of being virtuous and happy."

It is denominated an art, as it contains a system of rules for becoming virtuous and happy. Whoever practices these rules, attains an habitual power or facility of becoming virtuous and happy. It is likewise called a science, as it deduces those rules from the principles and connexions of our nature, and proves that the observance of them is productive of our happiness.

It is an art, and a science, of the highest dignity, importance, and use. Its object is man's duty, or his conduct in the several moral capacities and connections which he sustains. Its office is to direct that conduct; to shew whence our obligations arise, and where they terminate. Its use, or end, is the attainment of happiness; and the means it employs are rules for the right conduct of our moral powers.

Moral Philosophy has this in common with Natural Philosophy, that it appeals to nature or fact; depends on observation; and builds its reasonings on plain uncontroverted experiments, or upon the fullest induction of particulars of which the subject will admit. We must observe, in both these sciences, how nature is affected, and what her conduct is in such and such circumstances. Or, in other words, we must collect the appearances of nature in any given instance; trace these to some general principles, or laws of operation; and then apply these principles or laws to the explaining of other phenomena.

Therefore Moral Philosophy inquires, not how man might have been, but how he is, constituted: not into what principles or dispositions his actions may be artfully resolved; but from what principles and dispositions they actually flow: not what he may, by education, habit, or foreign influence, come to be, or do; but what, by his nature, or original constituent principles, he is formed to be and do. We discover the office, use, or definition of any work, whether natural or artificial, by observing its structure, the parts of which it consists, their connection or joint action. It is thus we understand the office and use of a watch, a plant, an eye, or hand. It is the same with a living creature, of the rational, or brute kind. Therefore, to determine the office, duty, or definition of man; or, in other words, what his business is, or what conduct he is obliged to pursue; we must inspect his constitution, take every part to pieces, examine their mutual relations one to the other, and the common effort or tendency of the whole.

Of Man and his connexions.

Man is born a weak, helpless, delicate creature; unprovided with food, clothing, and whatever else is necessary for subsistence, or defence. And yet, exposed as the infant is to numberless wants and dangers, he is utterly incapable of supplying the former, or securing himself against the latter. But, though thus feeble and exposed, he finds immediate and sure resources in the affection and care of his parents, who refuse no labours, and forego no dangers, to nurse and rear up the tender babe. By these powerful instincts, as by some mighty chain, does nature link the parent to the child, and form the strongest moral connection on his part, before the child has the least apprehension of it. Hunger and thirst, with all the sensations that accompany or are connected with them, explain themselves by a language strongly expressive, and irresistibly moving. As the several senses bring in notices and informations of surrounding objects, we may perceive in the young spectator early signs of a growing wonder and admiration. Bright objects and striking sounds are beheld and heard with a sort of commotion and surprise. But without resting on any, he eagerly passes from object to object, still pleased with whatever is most new. Thus the love of novelty is formed, and the passion of wonder kept awake. By degrees he comes acquainted with the most familiar objects, his parents, his brethren, and those of the family who are most conversant with him. He contracts a fondness for them; is uneasy when they are gone, and charmed to see them again. These feelings become the foundation of a moral attachment on his side; and by this reciprocal sympathy he forms the domestic alliance with his parents, brethren, and other members of the family. Hence he becomes interested in their concerns; and feels joy or grief, hope or fear, on their account, as well as his own.

As his affections now point beyond himself to others, he is denominated a good or ill creature, as he stands well or ill affected to them. These then are the first links of the moral chain, the early rudiments or outlines of his character, his first rude essays towards agency, freedom, manhood.

When he begins to make excursions from the nursery, and extend his acquaintance abroad, he forms a little circle of companions, engages with them in play or in quest of adventures, and leads or is led by them as his genius is more or less aspiring. Though this is properly the season in which appetite and passion have the ascendant, yet his imagination and intellectual powers open space; and as the various images of things pass before the mental eye, he forms a variety of tastes; relishes some things and dislikes others, as his parents, companions, and a thousand other circumstances, lead him to combine agreeable or disagreeable sets of ideas, or represent to him objects in alluring or odious lights.

As his views are enlarged, his active and social powers expand themselves in proportion; the love of action, of imitation, and of praise, emulation, curiosity, docility, a passion for command, and fondness of change. His passions are quick, variable, and pliant to every impression; his attachments and disgusts quickly succeed each other. He compares things, distinguishes actions, judges of characters, and loves or hates them as they appear well or ill affected to himself or to those he holds dear. Meanwhile, he soon grows sensible of the consequences of his own actions, as they attract applause, or bring contempt; he triumphs in the former, and is ashamed of the latter, wants to hide them, and blushes when they are discovered. By means of these powers, he becomes a fit subject of culture, the moral tie is drawn closer, he feels that he is accountable for his conduct to others as well as to himself, and thus is gradually ripening for society and action.

As man advances from childhood to youth, his passions as well as perceptions take a more extensive range. New senses of pleasure invite him to new pursuits; he grows sensible to the attractions of beauty, feels a peculiar sympathy with the sex, and forms a more tender kind of attachment than he has yet experienced. This becomes the cement of a new moral relation, and gives a softer turn to his passions and behaviour. In this turbulent period he enters more deeply into a relish of friendship, company, exercises, and diversions; the love of truth, of imitation and of design, grows upon him; and as his connections spread among his neighbours, fellow citizens, and countrymen, his thirst of praise, emulation, and social affections grow more intense and active. Mean while it is impossible for him to have lived thus long without having become sensible of those more august signatures of order, wisdom, and goodness, which are stamped on the visible creation; and of those strong suggestions within himself of a parent mind, the source of all intelligence and beauty, and the object as well as source of that activity and those aspirations which sometimes rouse his inmost frame and carry him out of himself to an all-mighty and all-governing Power: Hence arise those sentiments of reverence, and those affections of gratitude, resignation, and love, which link the soul with the Author of nature, and form that most sublime and godlike of all connections.

Man having now reached his prime, either new passions succeed, or the old set are wound up to an higher pitch. For, growing more sensible of his connection with the public, and that particular community to which he more immediately belongs; and taking withal a larger prospect of human life, and its various wants and enjoyments; he forms more intimate friendships, grasps at power, courts honour, lays down cooler plans of interest, and becomes more attentive to the concerns of society; he enters into family connections, and indulges those charities which arise from thence. The reigning passions of this period powerfully prompt him to provide for the decays of life; and in it compassion and gratitude exert their influence in urging the man, now in full vigour, to requite the affection and care of his parents, by supplying their wants and alleviating their infirmities.

At length human life verges downwards; and old age creeps on apace, with its anxiety, love of ease, interestlessness, fearfulness, foresight, and love of offspring. The experience of the aged is formed to direct, and their coolness to temper, the heat of youth; the former teaches them to look back on past follies; and the latter to look forward into the consequences of things, and provide against the worst. Thus every age has its peculiar genius and set of passions, corresponding to that period, and most conducive to the prosperity of the rest. And thus are the the wants of one period supplied by the capacities of another, and the weaknesses of one age tally to the passions of another.

Besides these, there are other passions and affections of a less ambulatory nature; not peculiar to one period, but belonging to every age, and acting more or less in every breast throughout life: such are, self-love, benevolence, love of life, honour, shame, hope, fear, desire, aversion, joy, sorrow, anger, and the like. The two first are affections of a cooler strain, one pointing to the good of the individual, the other to that of the species: joy, and sorrow, hope and fear, seem to be only modifications, or different exertions of the same original affections of love and hatred, desire and aversion, arising from the different circumstances or position of the object desired or abhorred, as it is present or absent. From these likewise arise other secondary, or occasional passions, which depend, as to their existence and several degrees, upon the original affections being gratified or disappointed; as, anger, complacence, confidence, jealousy, love, hatred, dejection, exultation, contentment, disgust, which do not form leading passions, but rather hold of them.

By these simple, but powerful springs, whether periodical or fixed, the life of man, weak and indigent as he is, is preserved and secured; and the creature is prompted to a constant round of action, even to supply his own numerous and ever-returning wants, and to guard against the various dangers and evils to which he is obnoxious. By these links, men are connected with each other, formed into families, drawn into particular communities, and all united, as by a common league, into one system or body, whose members feel and sympathize one with another. By this admirable adjustment of the constitution of man to his state, and the gradual evolution of his powers, order is maintained, society upheld, and human life filled with that variety of passion and action, which at once enliven and diversify it.

This is a short sketch of the principal movements of the human mind. Yet these movements are not the whole of man; they impel to action, but do not direct it; they need a regulator to guide their motions, to measure and apply their forces. And accordingly they have one that naturally superintends and directs their action. We are conscious of a principle within us, which examines, compares, and weighs things; notes the differences, observes the forces, and foresees the consequences of affections and actions. By this power we look back on past times, and forward into futurity, gather experiences, estimate the real and comparative value of objects, lay out schemes, contrive means to execute them, and settle the whole order and economy of life. This power we commonly distinguish by the name of reason, or reflection; the business of which is, not to suggest any original notices or sensations, but to canvass, range, and make deductions from them.

We are intimately conscious of another principle within us, which approves of certain sentiments, passions, and actions, and disapproves of their contraries. In consequence of the decisions of this inward judge, we denominate some actions and principles of conduct right, honest, good; and others wrong, dishonest, ill. The former excite our esteem, moral complacency, and affection, immediately and originally of themselves, without regard to their consequences, and whether they affect our interest or not. The latter do as naturally and necessarily call forth our contempt, scorn, and aversion. That power, by which we perceive this difference in affections and actions, and feel a consequent relish or dislike, is commonly called conscience, or the moral sense. Whether such a power belongs to human nature or not, must be referred to every one's experience of what passes within himself.

These two powers of reason and conscience, are evidently principles different in nature and kind from the passions and affections. For the passions are mere force or power, blind impulses, acting violently and without choice, and ultimately tending each to their respective objects, without regard to the interest of the others, or of the whole system: Whereas the directing and judging powers distinguish and ascertain the different forces, mutual proportions, and relations, which the passions bear to each other and to the whole; recognize their several degrees of merit; and judge of the whole temper and conduct, as they respect either the individual or the species; and are capable of directing or restraining the blind impulses of passion in a due consistency one with the other, and a regular subordination to the whole system.

This is some account of the constituent principles of our nature, which, according to their different mixtures, degrees, and proportions, mould our character, and sway our conduct in life. In reviewing that large train of affections which fill up the different stages of human life, we perceive this obvious distinction among them; that some of them respect the good of the individual, and others carry us beyond ourselves to the good of the species, or kind. The former have therefore been called private, and the latter public affections. Of the first sort are love of life, of pleasure, of power, and the like. Of the last are compassion, gratitude, friendship, natural affection, and the like. Of the private passions, some respect merely the security and defence of the creature; such as resentment, and fear: whereas others aim at some positive advantage or good; as wealth, ease, fame. The former sort therefore, because of this difference of objects, may be termed defensive passions. These answer to our dangers, and prompt us to avoid them if we can, or boldly to encounter them when we cannot.

The other class of private passions, which pursue private positive good, may be called appetitive. However, we shall still retain the name of private, in contradistinction to the defensive passions. Man has a great variety of wants to supply, and is capable of many enjoyments, according to the several periods of his life, and the different situations in which he is placed. To these, therefore, a suitable train of private passions correspond, which engage him in the pursuit of whatever is necessary for his subsistence or welfare.

Our public or social affections are adapted to the several social connections and relations which we bear to others, by making us sensible of their dangers, and interfering us in their wants, and so prompting us to secure them against one, and supply the other.

This is the first step then to discover the duty and de-

The nature of man, the having analyzed the principles of which he is composed. It is necessary, in the next place, to consider in what order, proportion, and measure of those inward principles, virtue, or a sound moral temper and right conduct, consists; that we may discover whence moral obligations arise.

Of Duty, or Moral Obligation.

It is by the end or design of any power or movement, that we must direct its motions, and estimate the degree of force necessary to its just action. If it want the force requisite for obtaining its end, we reckon it defective; if it has too much, so as to be carried beyond it, we say it is overcharged; and in either case it is imperfect, and ill contrived. If it has just enough to reach the scope, we esteem it right, and as it should be. Let us apply this reasoning to the passions:

The defense and security of the individual being the aim of the defensive passions, that security and defense must be the measure of their strength or indulgence. If they are so weak as to prove insufficient for that end, or if they carry us beyond it, i.e., raise unnecessary commotions, or continue longer than is needful, they are unfit to answer their original design, and therefore are in an unsound and unnatural state. The exercise of fear or resentment has nothing desirable in it, nor can we give way to either without painful sensations. Without a certain degree of them, we are naked and exposed: with too high a proportion of them, we are miserable, and often injurious to others. Thus cowardice or timidity, which is the excess of fear, instead of saving us in danger, gives it too formidable an appearance, makes us incapable of attending to the best means of preservation, and disarms us of courage our natural armour. Fool-hardiness, which is the want of a due measure of fear, leads us heedlessly into danger, and lulls us into a pernicious security. Revenge, i.e., excessive resentment, by the violence of its comotion, robs us of that prescience of mind which is often the best guard against injury, and inclines us to pursue the aggressor with more severity than self-defense requires. Puffianimity, or the want of a just indignation against wrong, leaves us quite ungarded, and tends to sink the mind into a pallive enervated tame¬ness. Therefore, "to keep the defensive passions duly proportioned to our dangers, is their natural pitch and tenor."

The private passions lead us to pursue some positive species of private good. That good, therefore, which is the object and end of each, must be the measure of their respective force, and direct their operation. If they are too weak or sluggish to engage us in the pursuit of their several objects, they are evidently deficient; but if they defeat their end by their imperiosity, then are they strained beyond the just tone of nature. Thus vanity, or an excessive passion for applause, betrays into such mean¬nesses and little arts of popularity, as makes us forfeit the honour we so anxiously court. On the other hand, a total indifference about the esteem of mankind, removes a strong guard and spur to virtue, and lays the mind open to the most abandoned prosecutions. Therefore, "to keep our private passions and desires proportioned to our wants, is the just measure and pitch of this class of affections."

The defensive and private passions do all agree in general in their tendency or conduciveness to the interest or good of the individual. Therefore, when there is a collision of interests, as may sometimes happen, that aggregate of good or happiness, which is composed of the particular goods to which they respectively tend, must be the common standard by which their comparative degrees of strength are to be measured. That is to say, if any of them, in the degree in which they prevail, are incompatible with the greatest aggregate of good, or most extensive interest of the individual, then are they unequal and disproportionate. For, in judging of a particular system or constitution of powers, we call that the supreme or principal end, in which the aims of the several parts or powers coincide, and to which they are subordinate; and reckon them in due proportion to each other, and right with regard to the whole, when they maintain that subordination or subserviency. Therefore, "to proportion our defensive and private passions in such measure to our dangers and wants, as best to secure the individual, and obtain the greatest aggregate of private good or happiness, is their just balance or comparative standard in case of competition."

In like manner, as the public or social affections point at the good of others, that good must be the measure of their force. When a particular social affection, as gratitude or friendship, which belongs to a particular social connection, viz. that of a benefactor or of a friend, is too feeble to make us act the grateful or friendly part; that affection, being insufficient to answer its end, is defective and unfound. If, on the other hand, a particular passion of this class counteract or defeat the interest it is designed to promote, by its violence or disproportion, then is that passion excessive and irregular. Thus natural affection, if it degenerates into a passionate fondness, not only hinders the parents from judging coolly of the interest of their offspring, but often leads them into almost partial and pernicious indulgence.

As every kind of affection points at the good of its particular object, it is possible there may be sometimes a collision of interests or goods. Thus the regard due to a friend may interfere with that which we owe to a community. In such a competition of interests, it is evident, that the greatest is to be chosen; and that is the greatest interest, which contains the greatest sum or aggregate of public good, greatest in quantity as well as duration. This then is the common standard, by which the respective forces and subordinations of the social affections must be adjusted. Therefore we conclude, that this class of affections are found and regular, when they prompt us to pursue the interest of individuals in an entire consistency with the public good; or, in other words, "when they are duly proportioned to the dangers and wants of others, and to the various relations in which we stand to individuals, or to society."

Thus we have found, by an induction of particulars, the natural pitch or tenor of the different orders of affection, considered apart by themselves. Now as the virtue or perfection of every creature lies in following its nature, or acting suitably to the just proportion and harmony of its several powers; therefore, "the virtue of a creature endowed with such affections as man, must consist in observing or acting agreeably to their natural pitch and tenor."

But, as there are no independent affections in the fabric of the mind, no passion that stands by itself without some relation to the rest, we cannot pronounce of any one, considered apart, that it is either too strong or too weak. Its strength and just proportion must be measured, not only by its subordination to its own immediate end, but by the respect it bears to the whole system of affections. Therefore, we say a passion is too strong, not only when it defeats its own end, but when it impairs the force of other passions, which are equally necessary to form a temper of mind suited to a certain economy or state; and too weak, not merely on account of its insufficiency to answer its end, but because it cannot sustain its part or office in the balance of the whole system. Thus the love of life may be too strong, when it takes from the regard due to one's country, and will not allow one bravely to encounter dangers, or even death, on its account. Again, the love of fame may be too weak, when it throws down the fences which render virtue more secure, or weakens the incentives which make it more active and public-spirited.

If it be asked, "How far may the affections towards private good or happiness be indulged?" one limit was before fixed for the particular indulgencies of each, viz. their subordination to the common aggregate of good to the private system. In these, therefore, a due regard is always supposed to be had to health, reputation, fortune, the freedom of action, the unimpaired exercise of reason, the calm enjoyment of one's self, which are all private goods. Another limit now results from the balance of affection just named, viz. "The security and happiness of others;" or, to express it more generally, "a private affection may be safely indulged, when, by that indulgence, we do not violate the obligations which result from our higher relations, or public connections." A just respect therefore being had to these boundaries, which nature has fixed in the breast of every man, what should limit our pursuits of private happiness? Is nature fallen and penurious? Or does the God of nature envy the happiness of his offspring?

Whether there is ever a real collision of interests between the public and private system of affections, or the ends which each clasps in view, will be afterwards considered; but where there is no collision, there is little or no danger of carrying either, but especially the public affection, to excess, provided both kinds are kept subordinate to a discreet and cool self-love, and to a calm and universal benevolence; which principles stand as guards at the head of each system.

This then is the conduct of the passions, considered as particular and separate forces, carrying us out to their respective ends; and this is their balance or economy, considered as compound powers, or powers mutually related, acting in conjunction towards a common end, and consequently as forming a system or whole.

Now, whatever adjusts or maintains this balance, whatever in the human constitution is formed for directing the passions, so as to keep them from defeating their own end or interfering with each other, must be a principle of a superior nature to them, and ought to direct their measures, and govern their proportions. But it was found, that reason or reflection is such a principle, which points out the tendency of our passions, weighs their influence upon private and public happiness, and shews the best means of attaining either. It having been likewise found, that there is another directing or controlling principle, which we call conscience, or the moral sense, which, by a native kind of authority, judges of affections and actions, pronouncing some just and good, and others unjust and ill; it follows, that the passions, which are mere impulses, or blind forces, are principles inferior and subordinate to this judging faculty. Therefore, if we would observe the mutual respects and the subordination which the different parts of the human constitution bear one to another, the passions ought to be subjected to the direction and authority of the leading or controlling principles.

We conclude therefore from this induction, that "the constitution or just economy of human nature consists in a regular subordination of the passions and affections to the authority of conscience, and the direction of reason."

That subordination is regular, when the proportion formerly mentioned is maintained; that is to say, "When the defensive passions are kept proportioned to our dangers; when the private passions are proportioned to our wants; and when the public affections are adapted to our public connections, and proportioned to the wants and dangers of others."

But the natural state, or the sound and vigorous constitution, of any creature, or the just economy of its powers, we call its health and perfection; and the acting agreeably to these, its virtue or goodness. Therefore, "the health and perfection of man must lie in the aforesaid supremacy of conscience and reason, and in the subordination of the passions to their authority and direction; and his virtue or goodness must consist in acting agreeably to that order or economy."

That such an economy of the mind, and such a conduct of its power and passions, will stand the test of reason, cannot admit of any dispute. For, upon a fair examination into the consequences of things, or the relations and aptitudes of means to ends, reason evidently demonstrates, and experience confirms it, that "to have our defensive passions duly proportioned to our dangers, is the surest way to avoid or get clear of them, and obtain the security we seek after."—"To proportion our private passions to our wants, is the best means to supply them;—and, to adapt our public affections to our social relations and the good of others, is the most effectual method of fulfilling one, and procuring the other." In this sense, therefore, virtue may be said to be a "conduct conformable to reason, as reason discovers an apparent aptitude in such an order and economy of powers and passions to answer the end for which they are naturally formed.

If the idea of moral obligation is to be deduced merely from this aptitude or connection between certain passions, or a certain order and balance of passions, and certain ends ends obtained or to be obtained by them; then is reason or reflection, which perceives that aptitude or connection, the proper judge of moral obligation; and on this supposition it may be defined, "the connection between the affection and the end, or between the action and the motive;" for the end is the motive, or the final cause; and the affection is the action, or its immediate natural cause. A man, from mere self love, may be induced to fulfill that obligation which is founded on the connection between the defensive passions and their ends, or the private passions and their ends; because, in that case, his own interest will prompt him to indulge them in the due proportion required. But if he has no affections which point beyond himself, no principle but self-love or some subtle modification of it, what shall interest him in the happiness of others, where there is no connection between it and his own? or what sense can he have of moral obligation to promote it? Upon this scheme therefore, without publick or social affections there could be no motive, and consequently no moral obligation, to a beneficent disinterested conduct.

But if the mere connection between certain passions, or a certain order of passions, and certain ends, is what constitutes or gives us the idea of moral obligation; then why may not the appositeness of any temper or conduct, nay, of any piece of machinery, to obtain its end, form an equally strict moral obligation? For the connection and aptitude are as strong and invariable in the latter instances as in the former. But as this is confounding the most obvious differences of things, we must trace the idea of moral obligation to another and a more natural source.

Let us appeal therefore to sense and experience, "how we stand affected to those different sets of passions in the just measure and balance of which we found a right temper to consist." For this is entirely a matter of experience, in which we must examine, as in any other natural inquiry, "what are the genuine feelings and operations of nature, and what affections or symptoms of them appear in the given instance."

The defensive passions, as anger and fear, give us rather pain than pleasure; yet we cannot help feeling them when provoked by injury or exposed to harm. We account the creature imperfect that wants them, because they are necessary to his defense. Nay, we should in some measure condemn ourselves, did we want the necessary degree of resentment and caution. But if our resentment exceeds the wrong received, or our caution the evil dreaded, we then blame ourselves for having overacted our part. Therefore, while we are in danger, to be totally destitute of them we reckon a blamable defect, and to feel them in a just, i.e., necessary measure, we approve, as suited to the nature and condition of such a creature as man. But, our security obtained, to continue to indulge them, we not only disapprove as hurtful, but condemn as unnatural, unbecoming, and mean-spirited: Nor will such a conduct afford any self-approving joy, when we coolly reflect upon it.

With regard to the private passions, such as love of life, pleasure, ease, and the like; as these aim at private good, and are necessary to the perfection and happiness of the individual, we should reckon any creature defective, and even blamable, that was destitute of them. Thus, we condemn the man who imprudently ruins his fortune, impairs his health, or exposes his life; we not only pity him as an unfortunate creature, but feel a kind of moral indignation and contempt of him, for having made himself such. On the other hand, though a discreet self regard does not attract our esteem and veneration, yet we approve of it in some degree, in an higher and different degree from what we would regard a well-contrived machine as necessary to constitute a finished creature, nay, to complete the virtuous character, and as exactly suited to our present indigent state. There are some passions respecting private good, towards which we feel higher degrees of approbation; as the love of knowledge, of action, of honour, and the like. We esteem them as marks of an ingenious mind, and cannot help thinking the character in which they are wanting remarkably stupid, and in some degree immoral.

With regard to the social affections, as compassion, natural affection, friendship, benevolence, and the like, we approve, admire, and love them in ourselves, and in all in whom we discover them, with an esteem and approbation, if not different in kind, yet surely far superior in degree to what we feel towards the other passions. These we reckon necessary, just, and excellently fitted to our structure and state; and the creature which wants them we call defective, ill-constituted, a kind of abortion. But the public affections we esteem as self-worthy, originally and eternally amiable.

But among the social affections, we make an obvious and constant distinction, viz. between those particular passions, which urge us with a sudden violence, and uneasy kind of sensation, to pursue the good of their respective objects, as pity, natural affection, and the like; and those calm dispassionate affections and desires which prompt us more steadily and uniformly to promote the happiness of others. The former we generally call passions; to distinguish them from the other sort, which go more commonly by the name of affections, or calm desires. The first kind we approve indeed, and delight in; but we feel still higher degrees of approbation and moral complacency towards the last, and towards all limitations of the particular instincts, by the principle of universal benevolence. The more objects the calm affections take in, and the worthier these are, their dignity rises in proportion, and with this our approbation keeps an exact pace. A character, on the other hand, which is quite divested of these public affections, which feels no love for the species, but, instead of it, entertains malice, rancour, and ill-will, we reckon totally immoral and unnatural.

Such then are the sentiments and dispositions we feel, when these several orders of affection pass before the mental eye.

Therefore, "that state in which we feel ourselves moved, in the manner above described, towards those affections and passions, as they come under the mind's review, and in which we are instantaneously, and independently of our choice or volition, prompted to a correspondent conduct, we call a state of moral obligation." Let us suppose, for instance, a parent, a friend, a benefactor, reduced duced to a condition of the utmost indigence and distress, and that it is in our power to give them immediate relief.

To what conduct are we obliged? what duty does nature dictate and require in such a case? Attend, and nature will tell with a voice irresistibly audible and commanding to the human heart, "that immediate relief ought to be given." Again, let a friend, a neighbour, or even a stranger, have lodged a deposit in our hands, and after some time reclaim it; no sooner do these ideas of the confidence reposed in us, and of property not transferred but deposited, occur, than we immediately and unavoidably feel and recognize the obligation to restore it. In both these cases, we should condemn ourselves, if we acted otherwise, as having done, or omitted doing, what we ought not;—as having acted beneath the dignity of our nature,—contrary to our most intimate sense of right and wrong:—we should accuse ourselves as guilty of ingratitude, injustice, and inhumanity;—and be conscious of deserving the censure, and therefore dread the resentment, of all rational beings.—But in complying with the obligation, we feel joy and self-approbation,—are conscious of an inviolable harmony between our nature and duty,—and think ourselves entitled to the applause of every impartial spectator of our conduct.

To describe therefore what we cannot perhaps define, a state of moral obligation, is "that state in which a creature, endowed with such senses, powers, and affections as man, would condemn himself, and think he deserved the condemnation of all others, should he refuse to fulfil it; but would approve himself, and expect the approbation of all others, upon complying with it."

And we call him a moral agent, who is in such a state, or is subject to moral obligation. Therefore as man's structure and connections often subject him to such a state of moral obligation, we conclude that he is a moral agent. But as man may sometimes act without knowing what he does, as in cases of frenzy or disease, or in many natural functions; or, knowing what he does, he may act without choice or affection, as in cases of necessity or compulsion; therefore, to denominate an action moral, i.e., approvable, or blameable, it must be done knowingly and willingly, or from affection and choice. A morally good action, then, is "to fulfil a moral obligation knowingly and willingly;" and a morally bad action, or an immoral action, is "to violate a moral obligation knowingly and willingly."

As not an action, but a series of actions constitute a character; as not an affection, but a series of affections constitute a temper; and as we denominate things by the gross, a fortiori, or by the qualities which chiefly prevail in them: "therefore we call that a morally good character, in which a series of morally good actions prevail; and that a morally good temper, in which a series of morally good affections have the ascendant." A bad character and bad temper are the reverse. But where the above mentioned order or proportion of passions is maintained, there a series of morally good affections and actions will prevail. Therefore, "to maintain that order and proportion, is to have a morally good temper and character." But a "morally good temper and character is moral rectitude, integrity, virtue, or the completion of duty."

If it be asked, after all, "How we come by the idea of moral obligation or duty?" we may answer, that we come by it in the same way as by our other original and primary perceptions. We receive them all from nature, or the great Author of nature. For this idea of moral obligation is not a creature of the mind, or dependent on any previous act of volition; but arises on certain occasions, or when certain other ideas are presented to the mind, as necessarily, instantaneously, and unavoidably, as pain does upon too near an approach to the fire, or pleasure from the fruition of any good. It does not, for instance, depend on our choice, whether we shall feel the obligation to succour a distressed parent, or to restore a deposit intrusted to us when it is recalled. We cannot call this a compound idea made up of one or more simple ideas. We may indeed, nay, we must, have some ideas antecedent to it, e.g. that of a parent—in distress—of a child—able to relieve—of the relation of one to the other,—of a trust,—of right, &c. But none of these ideas constitute the perception of obligation. These indeed, by a law of our nature, are the occasion of forgetting it; but they are as totally different from it, as colours are from sounds. By sense or reflection we perceive the correlatives, our memory recalls the favours or deposit we received, the various circumstances of the case are matters of fact or experience; but some delicate inward organ or power, or call it what we please, does, by a certain instantaneous sympathy, antecedent to the cool deductions of reason, and independent of previous instruction, art, or volition, perceive the moral harmony, the living irresistible charm of moral obligation, which immediately interests the correspondent passions, and prompts us to fulfil its awful dictates.

We need not apprehend any danger from the quickness of its decisions; nor be frightened, because it looks like instinct, and has been called so. Would we approve one for deliberating long, or reasoning the matter much at leisure, whether he should relieve a distressed parent, feed a starving neighbour, or restore the trust committed to him? Should we not suspect the reasoner of knavery, or of very weak affections to virtue? We employ reason in examining the condition, relations, and other circumstances of the agent or patient, or of those with whom either of them are connected, or, in other words, the state of the case; and in complicated cases, where the circumstances are many, it may require no small attention to find the true state of the case: but when the relations of the agent or patient, and the circumstances of the actions, are obvious, or come out such after a fair trial, we should scarce approve him who demurs on the obligation to that conduct which the case suggests.

From what has been said it is evident, that it is not the pleasure or agreeable sensations which accompany the exercise of the several affections, nor those consequent to the actions, that constitute moral obligation, or excite in us the idea of it. That pleasure is posterior to the idea of obligation; and frequently we are obliged, and acknowledge ourselves under an obligation, to such affections. affections and actions as are attended with pain; as in the trials of virtue, where we are obliged to sacrifice private to public good, or a present pleasure to a future interest. We have pleasure in serving an aged parent, but it is neither the perception nor prospect of that pleasure which gives us the idea of obligation to that conduct.

The Final Causes of our Moral Faculties of Perception and Affection.

We have now taken a general prospect of man, and of his moral powers and connections; and on these erected a scheme of duty, or moral obligation, which seems to be confirmed by experience, consonant to reason, and approved by his most inward and most sacred senses. It may be proper, in the next place, to take a more particular view of the final causes of those delicate springs by which he is impelled to action, and of those clogs by which he is restrained from it. — By this detail we shall be able to judge of their aptitude to answer their end, in a creature endowed with his capacities, subject to his wants, exposed to his dangers, and susceptible of his enjoyments; and from thence, we shall be in condition to pronounce concerning the end of his whole structure, its harmony with his state, and consequently its subserviency to answer the great and benevolent intentions of its author.

The supreme being has seen fit to blend in the whole of things a prodigious variety of discordant and contrary principles, light and darkness, pleasure and pain, good and evil. There are multifarious natures, higher and lower, and many intermediate ones between the wide-distant extremes. These are differently situated, variously adjusted, and subjected to each other; and all of them subordinate to the order and perfection of the whole. We may suppose man placed as in a centre amidst those innumerable orders of beings; by his outward frame drawn to the material system, and by his inward connected with the intellectual or moral, and of course affected by the laws which govern both, or affected by that good and all that ill which result from those laws. In this infinite variety of relations with which he is surrounded, and of contingencies to which he is liable, he feels strong attractions to the good, and violent repulsions or aversions to the ill. But as good and ill are often blended, and wonderfully complicated one with the other; as they sometimes immediately produce and run up into each other, and at other times lie at great distances, yet, by means of intervening links, introduce one another; and as these effects are often brought about in consequence of hidden relations, and general laws, of the energy of which he is an incompetent judge; it is easy for him to mistake good for evil, and evil for good; and consequently he may be frequently attracted by such things as are destructive, or repel such as are salutary. Thus, by the tender and complicated frame of his body, he is subjected to a great variety of ills, to sickness, cold, heat, fatigue, and innumerable wants. Yet his knowledge is so narrow without, and his reason so weak, that in many cases he cannot judge, in the way of investigation, or reasoning, of the connections of those effects with their respective causes, or of the various latent energies of natural things. He is therefore informed of this connection by the experience of certain senses, or organs of perception, which, by a mechanical instantaneous motion, feel the good and the ill, receiving pleasure from one, and pain from the other. By these, without any reasoning, he is taught to attract or shun what tends to his welfare, and to repel and avoid what tends to his ruin. Thus, by his senses of taste and smell, or by the pleasure he receives from certain kinds of food, he is admonished which agree with his constitution, and, by an opposite sense of pain, he is informed which sorts disagree, or are destructive of it; but is not by means of these instructed in the inward natures and constitutions of things.

Some of those senses are armed with strong degrees of uneasiness or pain, in order to urge him to seek after such objects as are suited to them. And these respect his more immediate and pressing wants; as the sense of hunger, thirst, cold, and the like; which by their painful importunities, compel him to provide food, drink, raiment, shelter. Those instincts by which we are thus prompted, with some kind of commotion or violence, to attract and pursue good, or to repel and avoid ill, we call appetites and passions. By our senses then we are informed of what is good or ill to the private system, or the individual; and by our private appetites and passions we are impelled to one, and restrained from the other.

In consequence of this machinery, and the great train of wants to which our nature subjects us, we are engaged in a continued series of occupations, which often require much application of thought, or great bodily labour, or both. The necessaries of life, food, cloaths, shelter, and the like, must be provided; conveniences must be acquired to render life still more easy and comfortable. In order to obtain these, arts, industry, manufactures, and trade are necessary: and to secure to us the peaceable enjoyment of their fruits, civil government, policy, and laws must be contrived, and the various benefits of public life carried on. Thus while man is concerned and bustled in making provision, or obtaining security for himself, he is by degrees engaged in connections with a family, friends, neighbours, a community, or a commonwealth. Hence arise new wants, new interests, new cares, and new employments. The passions of one man interfere with those of another. Interests are opposed. Competitions arise; contrary courses are taken. Disappointments happen, distinctions are made, and parties formed. This opens a vast scene of distraction and embarrassment, and introduces a mighty train of good and ill, both public and private. Yet amidst all this confusion and hurry, plans of action must be laid, consequences foreseen or guarded against, inconveniences provided for; and frequently particular resolutions must be taken, and schemes executed, without reasoning or delay.

Now, what provision has the Author of our nature made for this necessitous condition? How has he fitted the actor, man, for playing his part in this perplexed and busy scene?

Our supreme Parent, watchful for the whole, has not left himself without a witness here neither, and hath made nothing imperfect, but all things are double one against another. He has not left man to be informed, only by the cool notices of reason, of the good or ill, the happiness or misery of his fellow-creatures. He has made him sensible of their good and happiness, but especially of their ill and misery, by an immediate sympathy, or quick feeling of pleasure and of pain.

The latter we call pity or compassion. For the former, though every one who is not quite divested of humanity feels it in some degree, we have not got a name, unless we call it congratulation, or joyful sympathy, or that good humour which arises on seeing others pleased or happy. Both these feelings have been called, in general, the public or common sense, by which we feel for others, and are interested in their concerns as really, though perhaps less sensibly, than in our own.

When we see our fellow-creatures unhappy through the fault or injury of others, we feel resentment or indignation against the unjust causers of that misery. If we are conscious that it has happened through our fault or injurious conduct, we feel shame; and both these classes of senses and passions, regarding misery and wrong, are armed with such sharp sensations of pain, as not only prove a powerful guard and security to the species, or public system, against those ills it may, but serve also to lessen or remove those ills it does suffer. Compassion draws us out of ourselves to bear a part of the misfortunes of others, powerfully solicits us in their favour, melts us at sight of their distresses, and makes us in some degree unhappy till they are relieved from it. It is peculiarly well adapted to the condition of human life, because it is much more and oftener in our power to do mischief than good, and to prevent or lessen misery than to communicate positive happiness; and therefore it is an admirable restraint upon the more selfish passions, or those violent impulses that carry us to the hurt of others.

There are other particular instincts or passions, which interest us in the concerns of others, even while we are most busy about our own, and which are strongly attractive of good, and repulsive of ill to them. Such are natural affection, friendship, love, gratitude, desire of fame, love of society, of one's country. Now as the private appetites and passions were found to be armed with strong sensations of desire and uneasiness, to prompt man the more effectually to sustain labours, and encounter dangers, in pursuit of those goods that are necessary to the preservation and welfare of the individual, and to avoid those ills which tend to his destruction; in like manner it was necessary that this other class of desires and affections should be prompted with as quick sensations of pain, not only to counteract the strength of their antagonists, but to engage us in a virtuous activity for our relations, families, friends, neighbours, country. Indeed our sense of right and wrong will admonish us that it is our duty, and reason and experience farther assure us that it is both our interest and best security, to promote the happiness of others; but that sense, that reason, and that experience, would frequently prove but weak and ineffectual prompters to such a conduct, especially in cases of danger and hardship, and amidst all the importunities of nature, and that constant hurry in which the private passions involve us, without the aid of those particular kind affections, which mark out to us particular spheres of duty, and with an agreeable violence engage and fix us down to them.

It is evident therefore, that these two classes of affection, the private and public, are set one against the other, and designed to control and limit each other's influence, and thereby to produce a just balance in the whole. In general, the violent sensations of pain or uneasiness which accompany hunger, thirst, and the other private appetites, or too great fatigue of mind as well as of body, prevent the individual from running to great excesses in the exercise of the higher functions of the mind; as too intense thought in the search of truth, violent application to business of any kind, and different degrees of romantic heroism. On the other hand, the finer senses of perception, and those generous desires and affections which are connected with them, the love of action, of imitation, of truth, honour, public virtue, and the like, are wisely placed in the opposite scale, in order to prevent us from sinking into the dregs of the animal life, and debasing the dignity of man below the condition of brutes. So that by the mutual reaction of those opposite powers, the bad effects are prevented that would naturally result from their acting singly and apart; and the good effects are produced which each are severally formed to produce.

The same wholesome opposition appears likewise in the particular counterworkings of the private and public affections one against the other. Thus compassion is adapted to counterpoise the love of ease, of pleasure, and of life; and to disarm, or to set bounds to resentment; and resentment of injury done to ourselves or to our friends, prevents an effeminate compassion or consternation; and gives us a noble contempt of labour, pain, and death. Natural affection, friendship, love of one's country, nay, zeal for any particular virtue, are frequently more than a match for the whole train of selfish passions. On the other hand, without that intimate over-ruling passion of self-love, and those private desires which are connected with it, the social and tender instincts of the human heart would degenerate into the wildest dotage, the most torturing anxiety, and downright frenzy.

But not only are the different orders or classes of affection checks one upon another, but passions of the same classes are mutual clogs. Thus, how many are withheld from the violent outrages of resentment by fear? and how easily is fear controlled in its turn, while mighty wrongs awaken a mighty resentment? The private passions often interfere, and therefore moderate the violence of each other; and a calm self-love is placed at their head to direct, influence, and control their particular attractions and repulsions. The public affections likewise restrain one the other; and all of them are put under the control of a calm dispassionate benevolence, which ought in like manner to direct and limit their particular motions. —Thus most part, if not all the passions have a twofold aspect, and serve a twofold end. In one view they may be considered as powers, impelling mankind to a certain course, with a force proportioned to the apprehended moment of the good they aim at. In another view they appear as weights balancing the action of the powers, and controlling the violence of their impulses. By means of these powers and weights a natural poise is settled in the human breast by its all-wise Author, by which the creature is kept tolerably steady and regular in his course, amidst that variety of stages through which he must pass.

But this is not all the provision which God has made for the hurry and perplexity of the scene in which man is destined to act. Amidst those infinite attractions and repulsions towards private and public good and ill, mankind either cannot often foresee the consequences or tendencies of all their actions towards one or other of these, especially where those tendencies are intricate and point different ways, or those consequences remote and complicated: or though, by careful and cool inquiry, and a due improvement of their rational powers, they might find them out; yet distracted as they are with business, amused with trifles, dissipated by pleasure, and disturbed by passion, they either have, or can find, no leisure to attend to those consequences, or to examine how far this or that conduct is productive of private or public good on the whole. Therefore, were it left entirely to the flow and sober deductions of reason to trace those tendencies and make out those consequences, it is evident, that, in many particular instances, the business of life must stand still, and many important occasions of action be lost, or perhaps the greatest blunders be committed. On this account the Deity, besides that general approbation which we allow on every degree of kind affection, has moreover implanted in men many particular perceptions, or determinations, to approve of certain qualities or actions, which, in effect, tend to the advantage of society, and are connected with private good, though he does not always see that tendency, nor mind that connection. And these perceptions or determinations do, without reasoning, point out, and, antecedent to views of interest, prompt to a conduct beneficial to the public, and useful to the private system. Such is that sense of candor and veracity, that abhorrence of fraud and falsehood, that sense of fidelity, justice, gratitude, greatness of mind, fortitude, clemency, decorum; and that disapprobation of knavery, injustice, ingratitude, meanness of spirit, cowardice, cruelty and indecency, which are natural to the human mind. The former of those dispositions, and the actions flowing from them, are approved, and those of the latter kind disapproved by us, even abstracted from the view of their tendency or conduciveness to the happiness or misery of others or of ourselves. In one we discern a beauty, a superior excellency, a congruity to the dignity of man; in the other a deformity, a littleness, a debasement of human nature.

There are other principles also, connected with the good of society, or the happiness and perfection of the individual, though that connection is not immediately apparent, which we behold with real complacency and approbation, though perhaps inferior in degree, if not in kind; such as gravity, modesty, simplicity of deportment, temperance, prudent economy; and we feel some degree of contempt and dislike where they are wanting, or where the opposite qualities prevail. These and the like perceptions or feelings are either different modifications of the moral sense, or subordinate to it, and plainly serve the same important purpose, being expeditious monitors in the several emergencies of a various and distracted life, of what is right, what is wrong, what is to be pursued, and what avoided; and, by the pleasant or painful consciousness which attends them, exerting their influence as powerful prompters to a suitable conduct.

From a slight inspection of the above-named principles, it is evident they all carry a friendly aspect to society and the individual, and have a more immediate or a more remote tendency to promote the perfection or good of both. This tendency cannot be always foreseen, and would be often mistaken, or seldom attended to by a weak, busy, short-lived creature, like man, both rash and variable in his opinions, a dupe to his own passions or to the designs of others, liable to sicknesses, to want, and to error. Principles, therefore, which are so nearly linked with private security and public good, by directing him, without profane reasoning, where to find one, and how to promote the other, and by prompting him to a conduct conducive to both, are admirably adapted to the exigencies of his present state, and wisely calculated to obtain the ends of universal benevolence.

It were easy, by considering the subject in another light, to shew, in a curious detail of particulars, how wonderfully the inside of man, or that astonishing train of moral powers and affections with which he is endued, is fitted to the several stages of that progressive and probationary state, through which he is destined to pass. As our faculties are narrow and limited, and rise from very small and imperfect beginnings, they must be improved by exercise, by attention, and repeated trials. And this holds true, not only of our intellectual, but of our moral and active powers. The former are liable to errors in speculation, the latter to blunders in practice, and both often terminate in misfortunes and pains: and those errors and blunders are generally owing to our passions, or to our too forward and warm admiration of those partial goods they naturally pursue, or to our fear of those partial ills they naturally repel. Those misfortunes therefore lead us back to consider where our misconduct lay, and whence our errors flowed; and consequently are salutary pieces of trial, which tend to enlarge our views, to correct and refine our passions, and consequently improve both our intellectual and moral powers.—Our passions then are the rude materials of our virtue, which heaven has given us to work up, to refine and polish into an harmonious and divine piece of workmanship. They furnish out the whole machinery, the calms and storms, the lights and shades of human life. They shew mankind in every attitude and variety of character, and give virtue both its struggles and its triumphs. To conduct them well in every state, is merit; to abuse or misapply them, is demerit.

The different sets of senses, powers, and passions, which unfold themselves in those successive stages, are both necessary, and adapted to that rising and progressive state. Enlarging views and growing connections require new passions and new habits; and thus the mind, by these continually expanding and finding a progressive exercise, rises to higher improvements, and pushes forward to maturity and perfection.

In this beautiful economy and harmony of our structure, both outward and inward, with that state, we may at once discern the great lines of our duty traced out in the fairest and brightest characters, and contemplate with admiration a more august and marvellous scene of divine wisdom and goodness laid in the human breast, than we shall perhaps find in the whole compass of nature.

From this detail it appears, that man, by his original frame, is made for a temperate, compassionate, benevolent, active, and progressive state. He is strongly attractive of the good, and repulsive of the ills, which befall others as well as himself. He feels the highest approbation and moral complacency in those affections and in those actions which immediately and directly respect the good of others, and the highest disapprobation and abhorrence of the contrary. Besides these, he has many particular perceptions or instincts of approbation, which though perhaps not of the same kind with the others, yet are accompanied with correspondent degrees of affection, proportioned to their respective tendencies to the public good. Therefore, by acting agreeably to these principles, man acts agreeably to his structure, and fulfils the benevolent intentions of its Author.

The principal Distinctions of Duty or Virtue.

We have now considered the constitution and connections of man; and on these erected a general system of duty or moral obligation, consonant to reason, approved by his most sacred and intimate sense, suitable to his mixed condition, and confirmed by the experience of mankind. We have also traced the final causes of his moral faculties and affections to those noble purposes they answer with regard both to the private and the public system.

From this induction it is evident, that there is one order or class of duties which man owes to himself; another to society; and a third to God.

The duties he owes to himself are founded chiefly on the defensive and private passions, which prompt him to pursue whatever tends to private good or happiness, and to avoid or ward off whatever tends to private ill or misery. Among the various goods which allure and solicit him, and the various ills which attack or threaten him, "To be intelligent and accurate in selecting one, and rejecting the other, or in preferring the most excellent goods, and avoiding the most terrible ills, when there is a competition among either, and to be discreet in using the best means to attain the goods and avoid the ills, is what we call prudence." This, in our inward frame, corresponds to sagacity, or a quickness of sense in our outward.—"To proportion our defensive passions to our dangers, we call fortitude;" which always implies "a just mixture of calm resentment or animosity, and well governed caution." And this firmness of mind answers to the strength and muscling of the body.—And "duly to adjust our private passions to our wants, or to the respective moment of the good we affect or pursue, we call temperance;" which does therefore always imply "a just balance or command of the passions."

The second class of duties arises from the public or social affections; "the just harmony or proportion of which to the dangers and wants of others, and to the several relations we bear, commonly goes by the name of justice." This includes the whole of our duty to society, to its parent, and the general polity of nature; particularly gratitude, friendship, sincerity, natural affection, benevolence, and the other social virtues. The virtues comprehended under the former class, especially prudence and fortitude, may likewise be transferred to this; and according to the various circumstances in which they are placed, and the more confined or more extensive sphere in which they operate, may be denominated private, economical, or civil prudence, fortitude, &c. These direct our conduct with regard to the wants and dangers of those lesser or greater circles with which we are connected.

The third class of duties respects the Deity, and arises also from the public affections, and the several glorious relations which he sustains to us, as our creator, benefactor, law-giver, judge, &c.

We choose to consider this set of duties in the last place, because, though prior in dignity and excellency, they seem to be last in order of time, as thinking it the most simple and easy method to follow the gradual progress of nature, as it takes its rise from individuals, and spreads through the social system, and still ascends upwards, till at length it stretches to its almighty Parent and Head, and so terminates in these duties which are highest and best.

The duties resulting from these relations, are reverence, gratitude, love, resignation, dependence, obedience, worship, praise; which, according to the model of our finite capacities, must maintain some sort of proportion to the grandeur and perfection of the object whom we venerate, love, and obey. "This proportion or harmony, is expressed by the general name of piety or devotion;" which is always stronger or weaker, according to the greater or less apprehended excellency of its object. This sublime principle of virtue, is the enlivening soul which animates the moral system, and that cement which binds and sustains the other duties which man owes to himself or to society.

This then is the general temper and constitution of virtue, and these are the principal lines or divisions of duty. To those good dispositions, which respect the several objects of our duty, and to all actions which flow from such dispositions, the mind gives its sanction or testimony. And this sanction or judgment concerning the moral quality, or the goodness of actions or dispositions, moralists call conscience. When it judges of an action that is to be performed, it is called an antecedent conscience; and when it passes sentence on an action which is performed, it is called a subsequent conscience. The tendency of an action to produce happiness, or its external conformity to a law, is termed its material goodness; but the good dispositions from which an action proceeds, or its conformity to law in every respect, constitutes its formal goodness.

When the mind is ignorant or uncertain about the moment of an action, or its tendency to private or public good; or when there are several circumstances in the case, some of which being doubtful, render the mind dubious concerning the morality of the action; this is called a doubtful or scrupulous conscience: if it mistakes concern- ing these, it is called an erroneous conscience. If the error or ignorance is involuntary or invincible, the action proceeding from that error, or from that ignorance, is reckoned innocent, or not imputable. If the error or ignorance is supine or affected, i.e., the effect of negligence, or of affectation and wilful inadvertence, the conduct flowing from such error, or such ignorance, is criminal and imputable. Not to follow one's conscience, though erroneous and ill-formed, is criminal, as it is the guide of life; and to counteract it, shews a depraved and incorrigible spirit: Yet, to follow an erroneous conscience is likewise criminal, if that error which misled the conscience was the effect of inattention, or of any criminal passion.

If it be asked, "How an erroneous conscience shall be rectified, since it is supposed to be the only guide of life, and judge of morals?" we answer, In the very same way that we would rectify reason, if at any time it should judge wrong, as it often does, viz. By giving it proper and sufficient materials for judging right, i.e., by inquiring into the whole state of the case; the relations, connections, and several obligations of the actor; the consequences, and other circumstances of the action; or the surpluflage of private or public good which results, or is likely to result, from the action or from the omission of it. If those circumstances are fairly and fully stated, the conscience will be just and impartial in its decision. For, by a necessary law of our nature, it approves, and is well affected to the moral form; and if it seems to approve of vice or immorality, it is always under the notion or mark of some virtue. So that, strictly speaking, it is not conscience which errs; for its sentence is always conformable to the view of the case which lies before it; and is just, upon the supposition that the case is truly such as it is represented to it. All the fault is to be imputed to the agent, who neglects to be better informed, or who, thro' weakness or wickedness, hastens to pass sentence from an imperfect evidence.

Of Man's Duty to Himself. Of the Nature of Good, and the chief Good.

Every creature, by the constitution of his nature, is determined to love himself, to pursue whatever tends to his preservation and happiness, and to avoid whatever tends to his hurt and misery. Being endowed with sense and perception, he must necessarily receive pleasure from some objects, and pain from others. Those objects which give pleasure are called good, and those which give pain evil. To the former he feels that attraction or motion we call desire, or love; To the latter that impulse we call aversion or hatred. To objects which suggest neither pleasure nor pain, and are apprehended of no use to procure one, or ward off the other, we feel neither desire nor aversion; and such objects are called indifferent. Those objects which do not of themselves produce pleasure or pain, but are the means of procuring either, we call useful or noxious. Towards them we are affected in a subordinate manner, or with an indirect and reflexive, rather than a direct and immediate affection. All the original and particular affections of our nature, lead us out to, and ultimately rest in, the first kind of objects, viz. those which give immediate pleasure, and which we therefore call good, directly so. The calm affection of self-love alone is conversant about such objects as are only consequentially good, or merely useful to ourselves.

But besides those sorts of objects which we call good, merely and solely as they give pleasure, or are means of procuring it, there is an higher and nobler species of good, towards which we feel that peculiar movement we call approbation or moral complacency, and which we therefore denominate moral good. Such are our affections, and the consequent actions to them. The perception of this is quite distinct in kind from the perception of the other species; and though it may be connected with pleasure or advantage by the benevolent constitution of nature, yet it constitutes a good independent of that pleasure and that advantage, and far superior, not in degree only, but in dignity, to both. The other, viz. the natural good, consists in obtaining those pleasures which are adapted to the peculiar senses and passions susceptible of them, and is as various as are those senses and passions. This, viz. the moral good, lies in the right conduct of the several senses and passions, or their just proportion and accommodation to their respective objects and relations; and this is of a more simple and invariable kind.

By our several senses we are capable of a great variety of pleasing sensations. These constitute distinct ends or objects ultimately pursuable for their own sake. To these ends, or ultimate objects, correspond peculiar appetites or affections, which prompt the mind to pursue them. When these ends are attained, there it rests and looks no farther. Whatever therefore is pursuable, not on its own account, but as subservient or necessary to the attainment of something else that is intrinsically valuable or for its own sake, we call a mean, and not an end. So that ends, and not means, constitute the materials or the very essence of our happiness. Consequently, happiness cannot be one simple uniform thing in creatures constituted, as we are, with such various senses of pleasure, or such different capacities of enjoyment. Now, the same principle or law of our nature which determines us to pursue any one end or species of good, prompts us to pursue every other end or species of good of which we are susceptible, or to which our Maker has adapted an original propensity. But amidst the great multiplicity of ends or goods, which form the various ingredients of our happiness, we perceive an evident gradation or subordination, suited to that gradation of senses, powers, and passions, which prevails in our mixed and various constitution, and to that ascending series of connections which open upon us in the different stages of our progressive state.

Thus the goods of the body, or of the external senses, seem to hold the lowest rank in this gradation or scale of goods. These we have in common with the brutes; and though many men are brutish enough to pursue the goods of the body with a more than brutish fury; yet when at any time they come in competition with goods of an higher order, the unanimous verdict of mankind, by giving the last the preference, condemns the first to the meanest. meanest place. Goods consisting in exterior social connections, as fame, fortune, power, civil authority, seem to succeed next, and are chiefly valuable as the means of procuring natural or moral good, but principally the latter. Goods of the intellect are still superior; as taste, knowledge, memory, judgment, &c. The highest are moral goods of the mind, directly and ultimately regarding ourselves; as command of the appetites and passions, prudence, fortitude, benevolence, &c. These are the great objects of our pursuit, and the principal ingredients of our happiness. Let us consider each of them, as they rise one above the other in this natural series or scale, and touch briefly on our obligations to pursue them.

Those of the body are health, strength, agility, hardiness, and patience of change, neatness, and decency.

Good health, and a regular easy flow of spirits, are in themselves sweet natural enjoyments, a great fund of pleasure, and indeed the proper seasoning which gives a flavour and poignancy to every other pleasure. The want of health unfit us for most duties of life, and is especially an enemy to the social and human affections, as it generally renders the unhappy sufferer peevish and sullen, disgusted at the allotments of providence, and consequently apt to entertain suspicious and gloomy sentiments of its Author. It obstructs the free exercise and full improvement of our reason, makes us a burden to our friends, and useless to society. Whereas the uninterrupted enjoyment of good health, is a constant source of good humour; and good humour is a great friend to openness and benignity of heart; enables us to encounter the various ills and disappointments of life with more courage, or to sustain them with more patience; and, in short, conduces much, if we are otherwise duly qualified, to our acting our part in every exigency of life with more firmness, constancy, and dignity. Therefore it imports us much to preserve and improve an habit or enjoyment, without which every other external entertainment is tasteless, and most other advantages of little avail. And this is best done by a strict temperance in diet and regimen, by regular exercise, and by keeping the mind serene and unruffled by violent passions, and unsubdued by intense and constant labours, which greatly impair, and gradually destroy, the strongest constitutions.

Strength, agility, hardiness, and patience of change, suppose health, and are unattainable without it; but they imply something more, and are necessary to guard it, to give us the perfect use of life and limbs, and to secure us against many otherwise unavoidable ills. The exercise of the necessary manual, and of most the elegant arts of life, depends on strength and agility of body; personal dangers, private and public dangers, the demands of our friends, our families and country require them; they are necessary in war, and ornamental in peace; fit for the employments of a country and a town life, and they exalt the entertainments and diversions of both. They are chiefly obtained by moderate and regular exercise.

Few are so much raised above want and dependence, or so exempted from business and care, as not to be often exposed to inequalities and changes of diet, exercise, air, climate, and other irregularities. Now, what can be so effectual to secure one against the mischiefs arising from such unavoidable alterations, as hardiness, and a certain versatility of constitution, which can bear extraordinary labours, and submit to great changes, without any sensible uneasiness or bad consequences. This is best attained, not by an over great delicacy and minute attentions to forms, or by an invariable regularity in diet, hours, and way of living, but rather by a bold discreet latitude of regimen. Besides, deviations from established rules and forms of living, if kept within the bounds of sobriety and reason, are friendly to thought and original sentiment, animate the dull scene of ordinary life and business, and agreeably stir the passions, which stagnate or breed ill humour in the calms of life.

Neatness, cleanliness, and decency, to which we may add dignity of countenance and demeanour, seem to have something refined and moral in them. At least we generally esteem them indications of an orderly, genteel, and well governed mind, conscious of inward worth, or the respect due to one's nature. Whereas neatness, slovenliness, awkwardness, and indecency, are shrewd symptoms of something mean, careless, and deficient, and betray a mind untaught, illiberal, unconscious of what is due to one's self or to others. How much cleanliness conduces to health needs hardly to be mentioned; and how necessary it is to maintain one's character and rank in life, and to render us agreeable to others as well as to ourselves, is as evident.—There are certain motions, airs and gestures, which become the human countenance and form, in which we perceive a comeliness, openness, simplicity, gracefulness; and there are others, which, to our sense of decorum, appear uncomely, affected, disingenuous, and awkward, quite unsuitable to the native dignity of our face and form. The first are in themselves the most easy, natural, and commodious; give one boldness and presence of mind, a modest assurance, an air both awful and alluring, they bespeak candour and greatness of mind, raise the most agreeable prejudices in one's favour, render society engaging, command respect, and often love, and give weight and authority both in conversation and business: in fine, they are the colouring of virtue, which show it to the greatest advantage in whomsoever it is; and not only imitate, but in some measure supply it where it is wanting. Whereas the last, viz. rudeness, affectation, indecorum, and the like, have all the contrary effects; they are burdensome to one's self, a dishonour to our nature and a nuisance in society. The former qualities or goods are best attained by a liberal education, by preserving a just sense of the dignity of our nature, by keeping the best and politest company; but above all, by acquiring those virtuous and ennobling habits of mind, which are decency in perfection, which will give an air of unaffected grandeur, and spread a lustre truly engaging over the whole form and deportment.

We are next to consider those goods which consist in exterior social connections; as fame, fortune, civil authority, power.

The first has a twofold aspect; as a good pleasant in itself, or gratifying to an original passion; and then, as expedient or useful towards a farther end. Honour from the wife and good, on the account of a virtuous conduct, is regaling to a good man. There are few quite indifferent even even to the commendation of the vulgar. Though we cannot approve that conduct which proceeds entirely from this principle, and not from good affection or love of the conduct itself; yet as it is often a guard and additional motive to virtue in creatures imperfect as we are, and often distracted by interfering passions, it might be dangerous to suppress it altogether, however wise it may be to restrain it within due bounds, and however laudable to use it only as a scaffolding to our virtue, which may be taken down when that glorious structure is finished, but hardly till then.

To pursue fame for itself, is innocent; to regard it only as an auxiliary to virtue, is noble; to seek it chiefly as an engine of public usefulness, is still more noble. For though the opinion and breath of men are transient and fading things; often obtained without merit, and lost without cause: yet as our benefits are with men, and as our capacity of serving them is generally increased in proportion to their esteem of us; therefore found and well established moral applause may, and will be, modestly, not ostentatiously, fought after by the good; not indeed as a solitary refined sort of luxury, but as a public and proper instrument to serve and bless mankind. At the same time they will learn to despise that reputation which is founded on rank, fortune, and any other circumstances or accomplishments that are foreign to real merit, or to useful services done to others; and think that praise of little avail which is purchased without desert, and bestowed without judgment.

Fortune, power, and civil authority, or whatever is called influence and weight among mankind, are goods of the second division; that is, valuable and purchasable only as they are useful, or as means to a farther end, viz. the procuring or preserving the immediate objects of enjoyment or happiness to ourselves or others. Therefore, to love such goods on their own account, and to pursue them as ends, not the means of enjoyment, must be highly preposterous and absurd. There can be no measure, no limit to such pursuit; all must be whim, caprice, extravagance. Accordingly, such appetites, unlike all the natural ones, are increased by possession, and whetted by enjoyment. They are always precarious, and never without fears because the objects lie without one's self; they are seldom without sorrow and vexation, because no accession of wealth or power can satisfy them. But if those goods are considered only as the materials or means of private or public happiness; then the same obligations which bind us to pursue the latter, bind us likewise to pursue the former. We may, and no doubt we ought, to seek such a measure of wealth as is necessary to supply all our real wants, to raise us above servile dependence, and provide us with such conveniences as are suited to our rank and condition in life. To be regardless of this measure of wealth is to expose ourselves to all the temptations of poverty and corruption; to forfeit our natural independency and freedom; to degrade, and consequently to render the rank we hold, and the character we sustain in society, useless, if not contemptible. When these important ends are secured, we ought not to murmur or repine that we possess no more; yet we are not excluded by any obligation, moral or divine, from seeking more, in order to give us that happiest and most God-like of all powers, the power of doing good. A supine indolence in this respect is both absurd and criminal; absurd, as it robs us of an inexhausted fund of the most refined and durable enjoyments; and criminal, as it renders us so far useless to the society to which we belong. "That pursuit of wealth which goes beyond the former end, viz. the obtaining the necessaries, or such conveniences of life, as in the estimation of reason, not of vanity or passion, are suited to our rank and condition, and yet is not directed to the latter, viz. the doing good, is what we call avarice." And "that pursuit of power, which, after securing one's self, i.e. attaining the proper independence and liberty of a rational social creature, is not directed to the good of others, is what we call ambition, or the lust of power." To what extent the strict measures of virtue will allow us to pursue either wealth, or power, and civil authority, is not perhaps possible precisely to determine. That must be left to prudence, and the peculiar character, condition, and other circumstances of each man. Only thus far a limit may be set, that the pursuit of either must encroach upon no other duty or obligation which we owe to ourselves, to society, or to its Parent and Head. The same reasoning is to be applied to power as to wealth. It is only valuable as an instrument of our own security, and of the free enjoyment of those original goods it may, and often does, administer to us; and as an engine of more extensive happiness to our friends, our country, and mankind.

Now the best, and indeed the only way to obtain a solid and lasting fame, is an uniform inflexible course of virtue, the employing one's ability and wealth in supplying the wants, and using one's power in promoting or securing the happiness, the rights and liberties of mankind, joined to an universal affability and politeness of manners. And surely one will not mistake the matter much, who thinks the same course conducive to the acquiring greater accessions both of wealth and power: especially if he adds to those qualifications a vigorous industry, a constant attention to the characters and wants of men, to the conjunctures of times, and continually varying genius of affairs; and a steady intrepid honesty, that will neither yield to the allurements, nor be overawed with the terrors of that corrupt and corrupting scene in which we live. We have sometimes heard, indeed, of other ways and means, as fraud, dissimulation, servility, and prostitution, and the like ignoble arts, by which the men of the world (as they are called, shrewd politicians, and men of address!) amass wealth, and procure power: but as we want rather to form a man of virtue, an honest, contented, happy man, we leave to the men of the world their own ways, and permit them unenvied, and unimitated by us, to reap the fruit of their doings.

The next species of objects in the scale of good, are the goods of the intellect; as knowledge, memory, judgment, taste, sagacity, docility, and whatever else we call intellectual virtues. Let us consider them a little, and the means as well as obligations to improve them.

As man is a rational creature, capable of knowing the differences of things and actions,—as he not only feels and feels what is present, but remembers what is past, and often foresees what is future,—as he advances, from small beginnings beginnings, by slow degrees, and with much labour and difficulty to knowledge and experience;—as his opinions sway his passions;—as his passions influence his conduct,—and as his conduct draws consequences after it, which extend not only to the present, but to the future-time, and therefore is the principal source of his happiness or misery;—it is evident, that he is formed for intellectual improvements, and that it must be of the utmost consequence for him to improve and cultivate his intellectual powers, on which those opinions, those passions, and that conduct depend.

But besides the future consequences and moment of improving our intellectual powers, their immediate exercise on their proper objects yields the most rational and refined pleasures. Knowledge and a right taste in the arts of imitation and design, as poetry, painting, sculpture, music, architecture, afford not only an innocent, but a most sensible and sublime entertainment. By these the understanding is instructed in ancient and modern life, the history of men and things, the energies and effects of the passions, the consequences of virtue and vice; by these the imagination is at once entertained and nourished with the beauties of nature and art, lighted up and spread out with the novelty, grandeur, and harmony of the universe; and in fine, the passions are agreeably roused, and suitably engaged by the greatest and most interesting objects that can fill the human mind. He who has a taste formed to these ingenious delights, and plenty of materials to gratify it, can never want the most agreeable exercise and entertainment, nor once have reason to make that fashionable complaint of the tediousness of time. Nor can he want a proper subject for the discipline and improvement of his heart. For being daily conversant with beauty, order and design, in inferior subjects, he bids fair for growing in due time an admirer of what is fair and well-proportioned in the conduct of life, and the order of society, which is only order and design exerted in their highest subject. He will learn to transfer the numbers of poetry to the harmony of the mind, and of well-governed passions; and from admiring the virtues of others in moral paintings, come to approve and imitate them himself. Therefore to cultivate a true and correct taste, must be both our interest and our duty, when the circumstances of our station give leisure and opportunity for it, and when the doing it is not inconsistent with our higher obligations or engagements to society and mankind.

It is best attained by reading the best books, where good sense has more the ascendant than learning, and which retain more to practice than to speculation; by studying the best models, i.e., those which profess to imitate nature most, and approach the nearest to it; and by conversing with men of the most refined taste, and the greatest experience in life.

As to the other intellectual goods, what a fund of entertainment must it be to investigate the truth and various relations of things; to trace the operations of nature to general laws; to explain by these its manifold phenomena; to understand that order by which the universe is upheld, and that economy by which it is governed; to be acquainted with the human mind, the connection, subdivisions, and uses of its powers, and to mark their energy in life! How agreeable to the ingenious inquirer, to observe the manifold relations and combinations of individual minds in society; to discern the causes why they flourish or decay; and from thence to ascend, through the vast scale of beings, to that General Mind which presides over all, and operates unseen in every system, and in every age, through the whole compass and progression of nature! Devoted to such entertainments as these, the contemplative have abandoned every other pleasure, and sequestered themselves from social intercourse; for these the busy have often preferred, to the hurry and din of life, the calm retreats of contemplation; for these, when once they came to taste them, even the gay and voluptuous have thrown up the lawless pursuits of sense and appetite, and acknowledged these mental enjoyments to be the most refined, and indeed the only luxury. Besides, by a just and large knowledge of nature, we recognize the perfections of its Author; and thus piety, and all those pious affections which depend on just sentiments of his character, are awakened and confirmed; and a thousand superstitious fears, that arise from partial views of his nature and works, will of course be excluded. An extensive prospect of human life, and of the periods and revolutions of human things, will conduce much to the giving a certain greatness of mind, and a noble contempt of those little competitions about power, honour, and wealth, which disturb and divide the bulk of mankind; and promote a calm indulgence of those inconveniences and ills that are the common appendages of humanity. Add to all, that a just knowledge of human nature, and of those hinges upon which the business and fortunes of men turn, will prevent our thinking either too highly, or too meanly of our fellow-creatures; give no small scope to the exercise of friendship, confidence, and goodwill; and, at the same time, brace the mind with a proper caution and distrust, and give a greater mastery in the conduct of private as well as public life. Therefore, by cultivating our intellectual abilities, we shall best promote and secure our interest, and be qualified for acting our part in society with more honour to ourselves, as well as advantage to mankind. Consequently, to improve them to the utmost of our power is our duty; they are talents committed to us by the Almighty Head of society, and we are accountable to him for the use of them.

The intellectual virtues are best improved by accurate and impartial observation, extensive reading, and unconfined converse with men of all characters, especially with those who, to private study, have joined the widest acquaintance with the world and greatest practice in its affairs; but above all, by being much in the world, and having large dealings with mankind. Such opportunities contribute much to divest one of prejudices and a fervent attachment to crude systems, to open one's views, and to give that experience on which the most useful knowledge is built, and from which the surest maxims for the conduct of life are deduced.

The highest goods which enter into the composition of human happiness are moral goods of the mind, directly and ultimately regarding ourselves; as command of the appetites and passions, prudence and caution, magnanimity, fortitude, fortitude, humility, love of virtue, love of God, resignation, and the like. These sublime goods are, by way of eminence, goods recommended and enforced by the most intimate and awful sense and consciousness of our nature; goods that constitute the quintessence of happiness, that form and completion of soul which renders us approveable and lovely in the sight of God; goods, in fine, which are the elements of all our future perfection and felicity.

Most of the other goods we have considered depend partly on ourselves, and partly on accidents which we can neither foresee nor prevent, and result from causes which we cannot influence or alter. They are such goods as we may possess today and lose tomorrow, and which require a felicity of constitution and talents to attain them in full vigour and perfection, and a felicity of conjunctures to secure the possession of them. Therefore, did our happiness depend altogether or chiefly on such transitory and precarious possessions, it were itself most precarious, and the highest folly to be anxious about it. But though creatures, constituted as we are, cannot be indifferent about such goods, and must suffer in some degree, and consequently have our happiness incomplete without them, yet they weigh but little in the scale when compared with moral goods. By the benevolent constitution of our nature, these are placed within the sphere of our activity, so that no man can be destitute of them unless he is first wanting to himself. Some of the wisest and best of mankind have wanted most of the former goods, and all the external kind, and felt most of the opposite ills; yet, by possessing the latter, have declared they were happy, and to the conviction of the most impartial observers have appeared happy. The worst of men have been surrounded with every outward good and advantage of fortune, and have possessed great parts; yet, for want of moral rectitude, have been notoriously and exquisitely miserable. The exercise of virtue has supported its votaries, and made them exult in the midst of tortures almost intolerable; nay, how often has some false form or shadow of it sustained even the greatest villains and bigots under the same pressures! But no external goods, no goods of fortune, have been able to alleviate the agonies, or expel the fears of a guilty mind, conscious of the deserved hatred and reproach of mankind, and the just displeasure of almighty God.

As the present condition of human life is wonderfully chequered with good and ill; and as no height of station, no influence of fortune, can absolutely insure the good or secure against the ill; it is evident, that a great part of the comfort and serenity of life must lie in having our minds duly affected with regard to both, i.e., rightly tempered to the loss of one and the sufferance of the other. For it is certain, that outward calamities derive their chief malignity and pressure from the inward dispositions with which we receive them. By managing these right, we may greatly abate that malignity and pressure, and consequently diminish the number and weaken the moment of the ills of life, if we should not have it in our power to obtain a large share of its goods. There are particularly three virtues which go to the forming this right temper towards ill, and which are of singular efficacy, if not totally to remove, yet wonderfully to alleviate the calamities of life. These are fortitude, or patience, humility, and resignation.

Fortitude is that calm and steady habit of mind, which either moderates our fears, and enables us bravely to encounter the prospect of ill, or renders the mind serene and invincible under its immediate pressure. It lies equally distant from rashness and cowardice; and though it does not hinder us from feeling, yet prevents our complaining or shrinking under the stroke. It always includes a generous contempt of, or at least a noble superiority to, those precarious goods of which we can insure neither the possession nor continuance. The man therefore who possesses this virtue in this ample sense of it, stands upon an eminence, and sees human things below him; the tempest indeed may reach him, but he stands secure and collected against it upon the basis of conscious virtue, which the severest storms can seldom shake, and never overthrow.

Humility is another virtue of high rank and dignity, though often mistaken by proud mortals for meanness and pusillanimity. It is opposed to pride, which commonly includes in it a false or over-rated estimation of our own merit, an ascription of it to ourselves as its only and original cause, an undue comparison of ourselves with others, and, in consequence of that supposed superiority, an arrogant preference of ourselves, and a supercilious contempt of them. Humility, on the other hand, seems to denote that modest and ingenuous temper of mind, which arises from a just and equal estimate of our own advantages compared with those of others, and from a sense of our deriving all originally from the Author of our being. Its ordinary attendants are mildness, a gentle forbearance, and an easy unassuming humanity with regard to the imperfections and faults of others; virtues rare indeed, but of the fairest complection, the proper offspring of so lovely a parent, the best ornaments of such imperfect creatures as we are, precious in the sight of God, and which sweetly allure the hearts of men.

Resignation is that mild and heroic temper of mind, which arises from a sense of an infinitely wise and good providence, and enables one to acquiesce with a cordial affection in its just appointments. This virtue has something very peculiar in its nature, and sublime in its efficacy. For it teaches us to bear ill, not only with patience, and as being unavoidable; but it transforms, as it were, ill into good, by leading us to consider it, and every thing that has the least appearance of ill, as a divine dispensation, a wise and benevolent temperament of things, subservient to universal good, and of course including that of every individual, especially of such as calmly stoop to it. In this light, the administration itself, nay, every act of it, becomes an object of affection; the evil disappears, or is converted into a balm which both heals and nourishes the mind. For, though the first unexpected access of ill may surprise the soul into grief; yet that grief, when the mind calmly reviews its object, changes into contentment, and is by degrees exalted into veneration and a divine composure. Our private will is lost in that of the Almighty, and our security against every real ill rests on the same bottom as the throne of Him who lives and reigns for ever. Before we finish this section, it may be fit to observe, that as the Deity is the supreme and inexhausted source of good, on whom the happiness of the whole creation depends; as he is the highest object in nature, and the only object who is fully proportioned to the intellectual and moral powers of the mind, in whom they ultimately rest and find their most perfect exercise and completion; he is therefore termed the chief good of man objectively considered: And virtue, or the proportioned and vigorous exercise of the several powers and affections on their respective objects, as above described, is, in the schools, termed the chief good formally considered, or its formal idea, being the inward temper and native constitution of human happiness.

From the detail we have gone through, the following corollaries may be deduced.

1. It is evident that the happiness of such a progressive creature as man can never be at a stand, or continue a fixed invariable thing. His finite nature, let it rise ever so high, admits still higher degrees of improvement and perfection: and his progression in improvement, or virtue, always makes way for a progression in happiness. So that no possible point can be assigned in any period of his existence in which he is perfectly happy, that is, so happy as to exclude higher degrees of happiness. All his perfection is only comparative. 2. It appears that many things must conpire to complete the happiness of so various a creature as man, subject to so many wants, and susceptible of such different pleasures. 3. As his capacities of pleasure cannot be all gratified at the same time, and must often interfere with each other in such a precarious and fleeting state as human life, or be frequently disappointed, perfect happiness, i.e., the undisturbed enjoyment of the several pleasures of which we are capable, is unattainable in our present state. 4. That state is most to be sought after, in which the fewest competitions and disappointments can happen, which least of all impairs any sense of pleasure, and opens an inexhausted source of the most refined and lasting enjoyments. 5. That state which is attended with all those advantages is a state or course of virtue. 6. Therefore, a state of virtue, in which the moral goods of the mind are attained, is the happiest state.

Duties to Society.

Filial and Fraternal duty.

As we have followed the order of nature in tracing the history of man, and those duties which he owes to himself; it seems reasonable to take the same method with those he owes to society, which constitute the second class of his obligations.

His parents are among the earliest objects of his attention; he becomes soonest acquainted with them, repose a peculiar confidence in them, and seems to regard them with a fond affection, the early prognostics of his future piety and gratitude. Thus does nature dictate the first lines of filial duty, even before a just sense of the connection is formed. But when the child is grown up, and has attained to such a degree of understanding as to comprehend the moral tie, and be sensible of the obligations he is under to his parents; when he looks back on their tender and disinterested affection, their incessant cares and labours in nursing, educating and providing for him during that state in which he had neither prudence nor strength to care and provide for himself; he must be conscious that he owes to them these peculiar duties.

1. To reverence and honour them as the instruments of nature in introducing him to life, and to that state of comfort and happiness which he enjoys; and therefore to esteem and imitate their good qualities, to alleviate and bear with, and spread as much as possible a decent veil over their faults and weaknesses.

2. To be highly grateful to them for those favours which it can hardly ever be in his power fully to repay; to shew this gratitude by a strict attention to their wants, and a solicitous care to supply them; by a submissive deference to their authority and advice; by yielding to, rather than peevishly contending with their humours, as remembering how oft they have been persecuted by his; and in fine, by soothing their cares, lightening their sorrows, supporting the infirmities of age, and making the remainder of their life as comfortable and joyful as possible.

As his brethren and sisters are the next with whom the creature forms a social and moral connection, to them he owes a fraternal regard; and with them ought he to enter into a strict league of friendship, mutual sympathy, advice, assistance, and a generous intercourse of kind offices, remembering their relation to common parents, and that brotherhood of nature which unites them into a closer community of interest and affection.

Concerning Marriage.

When man arrives to a certain age, he becomes sensible of a peculiar sympathy and tenderness towards the other sex; the charms of beauty engage his attention, and call forth new and softer dispositions than he has yet felt. The many amiable qualities exhibited by a fair outside, or by the mild allurement of female manners, or which the prejudiced spectator without much reasoning supposes those to include, with several other circumstances, point his view and affection to a particular object, and of course contract that general rambling regard, which was lost and useless among the undistinguished crowd, into a peculiar and permanent attachment to one woman, which ordinarily terminates in the most important, venerable, and delightful connection in life.

The state of the brute-creation is very different from that of human creatures. The former are cloathed and generally armed by their structure, easily find what is necessary to their subsistence, and soon attain their vigour and maturity; so that they need the care and aid of their parents but for a short while; and therefore we see that nature has assigned to them vagrant and transient amours. The connection being purely natural, and formed merely for propagating and rearing their offspring; no sooner is that end answered, than the connection dissolves of course. But the human race are of a more tender and defenceless constitution; their infancy and non-age continue longer; they advance slowly to strength of body, and maturity of reason; they need constant attention, and a long series of cares. cares and labours to train them up to decency, virtue, and the various arts of life. Nature has, therefore, provided them with the most affectionate and anxious tutors, to aid their weaknesses, to supply their wants, and to accomplish them in those necessary arts; even their own parents, on whom she has devolved this mighty charge, rendered agreeable by the most alluring and powerful of all ties, parental affection. But unless both concur in this grateful task, and continue their joint labours, till they have reared up and planted out their young colony, it must become a prey to every rude invader, and the purpose of nature in the original union of the human pair be defeated. Therefore our structure as well as condition is an evident indication, that the human sexes are destined for a more intimate, for a moral and lasting union. It appears likewise, that the principal end of marriage is not to propagate and nurse up an offspring, but to educate and form minds for the great duties and extensive destinations of life. Society must be supplied from this original nursery with useful members, and its fairest ornaments and supports.

The mind is apt to be dissipated in its views, and acts of friendship and humanity; unless the former be directed to a particular object, and the latter employed in a particular province. When men once indulge in this dissipation, there is no stopping their career; they grow insensible to moral attractions, and, by obstructing or impairing the decent and regular exercise of the tender and generous feelings of the human heart, they in time become unqualified for, or adverse to, the forming a moral union of souls, which is the cement of society, and the source of the purest domestic joys. Whereas a rational undepraved love, and its fair companion marriage, collect a man's views, guide his heart to its proper object, and by confining his affection to that object do really enlarge its influence and use. Besides, it is but too evident from the conduct of mankind, that the common ties of humanity are too feeble to engage and interest the passions of the generality in the affairs of society. The connections of neighbourhood, acquaintance, and general intercourse, are too wide a field of action for many; and those of a public or community are so for more, and in which they either care not or know not how to exert themselves. Therefore nature, ever wise and benevolent, by implanting that strong sympathy which reigns between the individuals of each sex, and by urging them to form a particular moral connection, the spring of many domestic endearments, has measured out to each pair a particular sphere of action, proportioned to their views, and adapted to their respective capacities. Besides, by interesting them deeply in the concerns of their own little circle, she has connected them more closely with society, which is composed of particular families, and bound them down to their good behaviour in that particular community to which they belong. This moral connection is marriage, and this sphere of action is a family.

Of the conjugal alliance the following are the natural laws. 1. Mutual fidelity to the marriage-bed. Disloyalty defeats the very end of marriage; dissolves the natural cement of the relation; weakens the moral tie, the chief strength of which lies in the reciprocation of affection; and, by making the offspring uncertain, diminishes the care and attachment necessary to their education.

2. A conjunction of counsels and endeavours to promote the common interest of the family, and to educate their common offspring. In order to observe these laws, it is necessary to cultivate, both before and during the married state, the strictest decency and chastity of manners, and a just sense of what becomes their respective characters.

3. The union must be inviolable and for life. The nature of friendship, and particularly of this species of it, the education of their offspring, and the order of society, and of successions which would otherwise be extremely perplexed, do all seem to require it. To preserve this union, and render the matrimonial state more harmonious and comfortable, a mutual esteem and tenderness, a mutual deference and forbearance, a communication of advice, and assistance and authority, are absolutely necessary. If either party keep within their proper departments, there need be no disputes about power or superiority, and there will be none. They have no opposite, no separate interests; and therefore there can be no just ground for opposition of conduct.

From this detail, and the present state of things, in which there is pretty near a parity of numbers of both sexes, it is evident, that polygamy is an unnatural state; and though it should be granted to be more fruitful of children, which however it is not found to be; yet it is by no means so fit for rearing minds; which seems to be as much, if not more, the intention of nature, than the propagation of bodies.

Of Parental Duty.

The connection of parents with their children is a natural consequence of the matrimonial connection, and the duties which they owe them result as naturally from that connection. The feeble state of children, subject to so many wants and dangers, requires their incessant care and attention; their ignorant and uncultivated minds demand their continual instruction and culture. Had human creatures come into the world with the full strength of men, and the weakness of reason and vehemence of passions which prevail in children, they would have been too strong or too stubborn to have submitted to the government and instruction of their parents. But, as they were designed for a progression in knowledge and virtue, it was proper that the growth of their bodies should keep pace with that of their minds, lest the purposes of that progression should have been defeated. Among other admirable purposes which this gradual expansion of their outward as well as inward structure serves, this is one, that it affords ample scope to the exercise of many tender and generous affections, which fill up the domestic life with a beautiful variety of duties and enjoyments; and are of course a noble discipline for the heart, and an hardy kind of education for the more honourable and important duties of public life.

The above-mentioned weak and ignorant state of children, seems plainly to invest their parents with such authority

Herile and Servile Duty.

In the natural course of human affairs it must necessarily happen, that some of mankind will live in plenty and opulence, and others be reduced to a state of indigence and poverty. The former need the labours of the latter, and the latter the provision and support of the former. This mutual necessity is the foundation of that connection, whether we call it moral or civil, which subsists between masters and servants. He who feeds another has a right to some equivalent, the labour of him whom he maintains, and the fruits of it. And he who labours for another has a right to expect that he should support him. But as the labours of a man of ordinary strength are certainly of greater value than mere food and clothing; because they would actually produce more, even the maintenance of a family, were the labourer to employ them in his own behalf; therefore he has an undoubted right to rate and dispose of his service for certain wages above mere maintenance; and if he has incautiously disposed of it for the latter only, yet the contract being of the onerous kind, he may equitably claim a supply of that deficiency. If the service be specified, the servant is bound to that only; if not, then he is to be construed as bound only to such services as are consistent with the laws of justice and humanity. By the voluntary servitude to which he subjects himself, he forfeits no rights but such as are necessarily included in that servitude, and is obnoxious to no punishment but such as a voluntary failure in the service may be supposed reasonably to require. The offspring of such servants have a right to that liberty which neither they nor their parents have forfeited.

As to those who, because of some heinous offence, or for some notorious damage, for which they cannot otherwise compensate, are condemned to perpetual service; they do not, on that account, forfeit all the rights of men; but those, the loss of which is necessary to secure society against the like offences for the future, or to repair the damage they have done.

With regard to captives taken in war, it is barbarous and inhuman to make perpetual slaves of them, unless some peculiar and aggravated circumstances of guilt have attended their hostility. The bulk of the subjects of any government engaged in war, may be fairly esteemed innocent enemies; and therefore they have a right to that clemency which is consistent with the common safety of mankind, and the particular security of that society against which they are engaged. Though ordinary captives have a grant of their lives; yet to pay their liberty as an equivalent, is much too high a price. There are other ways of acknowledging or returning the favour, than by surrendering what is far dearer than life itself. To those who, under pretext of the necessities of commerce, drive the unnatural trade of bargaining for human flesh, and confining their innocent but unfortunate fellow-creatures to eternal servitude and misery, we may address the words of a fine writer; "Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling and regarding those of our own species as our wealth and possessions."

Social Social Duties of the private Kind.

Hitherto we have considered only the domestic economical duties, because these are first in the progress of nature. But as man passes beyond the little circle of a family, he forms connections with relations, friends, neighbours, and others; from whence results a new train of duties of the more private social kind, as friendship, charity, courtesy, good-neighbourhood, charity, forgiveness, hospitality.

Man is admirably formed for particular social attachments and duties. There is a peculiar and strong propensity in his nature to be affected with the sentiments and dispositions of others. Men, like certain musical instruments, are set to each other, so that the vibrations or notes excited in one raise correspondent notes and vibrations in the others. The impulses of pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow, made on one mind, are, by an instantaneous sympathy of nature, communicated in some degree to all; especially when hearts are in unison of kindred; the joy that vibrates in one, communicates to the other also. We may add, that though joy thus imparted swells the harmony; yet grief vibrated to the heart of a friend, and rebounding from thence in sympathetic notes, melts, as it were, and almost dries away. All the passions, but especially those of the social kind, are contagious; and when the passions of one man mingle with those of another, they increase and multiply prodigiously. There is a most moving eloquence in the human countenance, air, voice, and gesture, wonderfully expressive of the most latent feelings and passions of the soul, which darts them, like a subtle flame, into the hearts of others, and raises correspondent feelings there: friendship, love, good-humour, joy, spread through every feature, and particularly shoot from the eyes their softer and fiercer fires with an irresistible energy. And in like manner, the opposite passions of hatred, enmity, ill humour, melancholy, diffuse a sultry and saddening air over the face, and, flashing from eye to eye, kindle a train of similar passions. By these and other admirable pieces of machinery, men are formed for society and the delightful interchange of friendly sentiment and duties; to increase the happiness of others by participation, and their own by rebound; and to diminish, by dividing, the common stock of their misery.

The first emanations of the social principle beyond the bounds of a family, lead us to form a nearer conjunction of friendship or goodwill with those who are anywhere connected with us by blood or domestic alliance. To them our affection does, commonly, exert itself in a greater or less degree, according to the nearness or distance of the relation. And this proportion is admirably suited to the extent of our powers and the indigence of our state; for it is only within those lesser circles of consanguinity or alliance, that the generality of mankind are able to display their abilities or benevolence, and consequently to uphold their connection with society and subserviency to a public interest. Therefore it is our duty to regard these closer connections as the next department to that of a family, in which nature has marked out for us a sphere of activity and usefulness; and to cultivate the kind affections which are the cement of those endearing alliances.

Frequently, the view of distinguishing moral qualities in some of our acquaintance may give birth to that more noble connection we call friendship, which is far superior to the alliances of consanguinity. For these are of a superficial, and often of a transitory nature; of which, as they hold more of instinct than of reason, we cannot give such a rational account. But friendship derives all its strength and beauty, and the only existence which is durable, from the qualities of the heart, or from virtuous and lovely dispositions. Therefore friendship may be described to be, "The union of two souls, by means of virtue, the common object and cement of their mutual affection." Without virtue, or the supposition of it, friendship is only a mercenary league, an alliance of interest, which must dissolve of course when that interest decays or subsists no longer. It is not so much any particular passion, as a composition of some of the noblest feelings and passions of the mind. Good sense, a just taste and love of virtue, a thorough candor and benignity of heart, or what we usually call a good temper, and a generous sympathy of sentiments and affections, are the necessary ingredients of this virtuous connection. When it is grafted on esteem, strengthened by habit, and mellowed by time, it yields infinite pleasure ever new and ever growing, is a noble support amidst the various trials and vicissitudes of life, and an high seasoning to most of our other enjoyments. To form and cultivate virtuous friendship must be very improving to the temper; as its principal object is virtue, set off with all the allurement of countenance, air, and manners, shining forth in the native graces of manly honest sentiments and affections, and rendered visible as it were to the friendly spectator in a conduct unaffectedly great and good; and as its principal exercises are the very energies of virtue, or its effects and emanations. So that, wherever this amiable attachment prevails, it will exalt our admiration and attachment to virtue, and, unless impeded in its course by unnatural prejudices, run out into a friendship to the human race. For as no one can merit, and none ought to usurp, the sacred name of friend, who hates mankind; so, whoever truly loves them, possesses the most essential quality of a true friend.

The duties of friendship are, a mutual esteem of each other, unbribed by interest, and independent of it; a generous confidence, as far distant from suspicion as from reserve; an inviolable harmony of sentiments and dispositions, of designs and interests; a fidelity unshaken by the changes of fortune; a constancy unalterable by distance of time or place; a resignation of one's personal interests to those of one's friend; and a reciprocal, unenvious, unreserved exchange of kind offices.—But amidst all the exertions of this moral connection, humane and generous as it is, we must remember that it operates within a narrow sphere, and its immediate operations respect only the individual; and therefore particular impulses must still be subordinate to a more public interest, or be always directed and controlled by the more extensive connections of our nature.

When our friendship terminates on any of the other sex, in whom beauty or agreeableness of person and external gracefulness of manners conspire to express and heighten the moral charm of a tender honest heart, and sweet, ingenuous, modest temper, lighted up by good sense, it generally grows into a more soft and endearing attachment. When this attachment is improved by a growing acquaintance with the worth of its object, is conducted by discretion, and issues at length, as it ought to do, in the moral connection of marriage, it becomes the source of many amiable duties, of a communication of passions and interests, of the most refined decencies, and of a thousand nameless deep-felt joys of reciprocal tenderness and love, flowing from every look, word, and action. Here friendship acts with double energy, and the natural confides with the moral charm to strengthen and secure the love of virtue. As the delicate nature of female honour and decorum, and the inexpressible grace of a chastest and modest behaviour, are the surest and indeed the only means of kindling at first, and ever after of keeping alive this tender and elegant flame, and of accomplishing the excellent ends designed by it; to attempt by fraud to violate one, or, under pretence of passion, fully and corrupt the other, and, by so doing, to expose the too often credulous and unguarded object, with a wanton cruelty, to the hatred of her own sex, and the scorn of ours, and to the lowest infamy of both, is a conduct not only base and criminal, but inconsistent with that truly rational and refined enjoyment, the spirit and quintessence of which is derived from the balmful and sacred charms of virtue kept untainted, and therefore ever alluring to the lover's heart.

Courtezey, good-neighbourhood, affability, and the like duties which are founded on our private social connections, are no less necessary and obligatory to creatures united in society, and supporting and supported by each other in a chain of mutual want and dependence. They do not consist in a smooth address, an artificial or obsequious air, fawning adulation, or a polite servility of manners; but in a just and modest sense of our own dignity and that of others, and of the reverence due to mankind, especially to those who hold the higher links of the social chain; in a discreet and manly accommodation of ourselves to the foibles and humours of others; in a strict observance of the rules of decorum and civility; but above all in a frank obliging carriage, and generous interchange of good deeds rather than words. Such a conduct is of great use and advantage, as it is an excellent security against injury, and the best claim and recommendation to the esteem, civility, and universal respect of mankind. This inferior order of virtues unites the particular members of society more closely, and form the lesser pillars of the civil fabric; which, in many instances, supply the unavoidable defects of laws, and maintain the harmony and decorum of social intercourse, where the more important and essential lines of virtue are wanting.

Charity and forgiveness are truly amiable and useful duties of the social kind. There is a twofold distinction of rights commonly taken notice of by moral writers, viz., perfect and imperfect. To fulfill the former, is necessary to the being and support of society; to fulfill the latter, is a duty equally sacred and obligatory, and tends to the improvement and prosperity of society: but as the violation of them is not equally prejudicial to the public good, the fulfilling them is not subjected to the cognizance of laws, but left to the candor, humanity, and gratitude of individuals. And by this means ample scope is given to exercise all the generosity, and display the genuine merit and lustre of virtue. Thus the wants and misfortunes of others call for our charitable affluence and reasonable supplies: and the good man, unconstrained by law, and uncontrollable by human authority, will cheerfully acknowledge and generously satisfy this mournful and moving claim; a claim supported by the sanction of heaven, of whose bounties he is honoured to be the grateful trustee. If his own perfect rights are invaded by the injustice of others, he will not therefore reject their imperfect right to pity and forgiveness, unless his grant of these should be inconsistent with the more extensive rights of society or the public good. In that case he will have recourse to public justice and the laws; and even then he will prosecute the injury with no unnecessary severity, but rather with mildness and humanity. When the injury is merely personal, and of such a nature as to admit of alleviations, and the forgiveness of which would be attended with no worse consequences, especially of a public kind, the good man will generously forgive his offending brother. And it is his duty to do so, and not to take private revenge, or retaliate evil for evil. For though resentment of injury is a natural passion, and implanted, as was observed above, for wise and good ends; yet, considering the manifold partialities which most men have for themselves, was every one to act as judge in his own cause, and to execute the sentence dictated by his own resentment, it is but too evident that mankind would pass all bounds in their fury, and the last sufferer be provoked in his turn to make full reprisals. So that evil, thus encountering with evil, would produce one continued series of violence and misery, and render society intolerable, if not impracticable. Therefore, where the security of the individual, or good of the public, does not require a proportionable retaliation, it is agreeable to the general law of benevolence, and to the particular end of the passion (which is to prevent injury, and the misery occasioned by it) to forgive personal injuries, or not to return evil for evil. This duty is one of the noble refinements which Christianity has made upon the general maxims and practice of mankind, and enforced with a peculiar strength and beauty by sanctions no less alluring than awful. And indeed the practice of it is generally its own reward; by expelling from the mind the most dreadful intruders upon its repose, those rancorous passions which are begot and nursed by resentment; and by disarming and even subduing every enemy one has, except such as have nothing left of men but the outward form.

The most enlarged and humane connection of the private kind, seems to be the hospitable alliance from which flow the amiable and disinterested duties we owe to strangers. If the exercise of passions of the most private and instinctive kind is beheld with moral approbation and delight, how lovely and venerable must those appear, which result from a calm philanthropy, are founded in the common rights and connections of society, and embrace men, not not of a particular sect, party, or nation, but all in general without distinction, and without any of the little partialities of self-love!

Social Duties of the Commercial Kind.

The next order of connections are those which arise from the wants and weaknesses of mankind, and from the various circumstances in which their different situations place them. These we may call commercial connections; and the duties which result from them commercial duties, as justice, fair-dealing, sincerity, fidelity to compacts, and the like.

Though nature is perfect in all her works, yet she has observed a manifest and eminent distinction among them. To all such as lie beyond the reach of human skill and power, and are properly of her own department, she has given the finishing hand. These man may design after and imitate; but he can neither rival them, nor add to their beauty or perfection: such are the forms and structure of vegetables, animals, and many of their productions. There are others of her works which she has of design left unfinished, as it were, in order to exercise the ingenuity and power of man. She has presented to him a rich profusion of materials of every kind for his conveniency and use; but they are rude and unpolished, or not to be come at without art and labour. These therefore he must apply, in order to adapt them to his use, and to enjoy them in perfection. Thus nature has given him an infinite variety of herbs, grain, foils, minerals, wood, water, earth, and a thousand other crude materials to supply his numerous wants. But he must sow, plant, dig, refine, polish, build, and, in short, manufacture the various produce of nature, in order to obtain even the necessaries, and much more the conveniences and elegancies of life. These, then, are the price of his labour and industry; and, without that, nature will sell him nothing. But as the wants of mankind are many, and the single strength of individuals small, they could hardly find the necessaries, and much less the conveniences of life, without uniting their ingenuity and strength in acquiring these, and without a mutual intercourse of good offices. Some men are better formed for some kinds of ingenuity and labour, and others for other kinds; and different soils and climates are enriched with different productions; so that men, by exchanging the produce of their respective labours, and supplying the wants of one country with the superfluities of another, do, in effect, diminish the labours of each, and increase the abundance of all. This is the foundation of all commerce, or exchange of commodities and goods one with another; in order to facilitate which, men have contrived different species of coin or money, as a common standard by which to estimate the comparative values of their respective goods. But, to render commerce sure and effectual, justice, fair-dealing, sincerity, and fidelity to compacts are absolutely necessary.

Justice, or fair dealing, or, in other words, a disposition to treat others as we would be treated by them, is a virtue of the first importance, and inseparable from the virtuous character. It is the cement of society, or that pervading spirit which connects its members, inspires its various relations, and maintains the order and subordination of each part to the whole. Without it, society would become a den of thieves and banditti, hating and hated, devouring and devoured, by one another.

Sincerity or veracity in our words and actions is another virtue or duty of great importance to society, being one of the great bands of mutual intercourse, and the foundation of mutual trust. Without it, society would be the dominion of mistrust, jealousy and fraud, and conversation a traffic of lies and dissimulation. It includes in it a conformity of our words with our sentiments, a correspondence between our actions and dispositions, a strict regard to truth, and an irreconcilable abhorrence of falsehood. It does not indeed require that we expose our sentiments indifferently, or tell all the truth in every case; but certainly it does not and cannot admit the least violation of truth, or contradiction to our sentiments. For if these bounds are once passed, no possible limit can be assigned where the violation shall stop; and no pretence of private or public good can possibly counterbalance the ill consequences of such a violation.

Fidelity to promises, compacts and engagements, is likewise a duty of such importance to the security of commerce and interchange of benevolence among mankind, that society would soon grow intolerable without the strict observance of it. Hobbes, and others who follow the same track, have taken a wonderful deal of pains to puzzle this subject, and to make all the virtues of this fort merely artificial, and not at all obligatory, antecedent to human conventions. No doubt, compacts suppose people who make them, and promises suppose persons to whom they are made; and therefore both suppose some society more or less between those who enter into these mutual engagements. But is not a compact or promise binding, till men have agreed that they shall be binding? Or are they only binding because it is our interest to be bound by them, or to fulfill them? Do we highly approve the man who fulfils them, even though they should prove to be against his interest? And do not we condemn him as a knave, who violates them on that account? A promise is a voluntary declaration, by words, or by an action equally significant, of our resolution to do something in behalf of another, or for his service. When a promise is made, the person who makes it is by all supposed under an obligation to perform it; and he to whom it is made may demand the performance as his right. That perception of obligation is a simple idea, and is on the same footing as our other moral perceptions; which may be described by instances, but cannot be defined. Whether we have a perception of such obligation quite distinct from the interest, either public or private, that may accompany the fulfillment of it, must be referred to the conscience of every individual. And, whether the mere sense of that obligation, apart from its concomitants, is not a sufficient inducement or motive to keep one's promise, without having recourse to any selfish principal of our nature, must be likewise appealed to the conscience of every honest man. Fair dealing and fidelity to compacts require that we take no advantage of the ignorance, passion, or incapacity of others, from whatever cause that incapacity arises;—that we be explicit and candid in making bargains, just and faithful faithful in fulfilling our part of them. And if the other party violates his engagements, redress is to be sought from the laws, or from those who are intrusted with the execution of them. In fine, the commercial virtues and duties require that we not only do not invade, but maintain the rights of others;—that we be fair and impartial in transferring, bartering, or exchanging property, whether in goods or service;—and be inviolably faithful to our word and our engagements, where the matter of them is not criminal, and where they are not extorted by force.

Social Duties of the Political Kind.

We are now arrived at the last and highest order of duties respecting society, which result from the exercise of the most generous and heroic affections, and are founded on our most elegant connections.

The social principle in man is of such an expansive nature, that it cannot be confined within the circuit of a family, of friends, or a neighbourhood; it spreads into wider systems, and draws men into larger confederacies, communities, and commonwealths.—It is in these only that the higher powers of our nature attain the highest improvement and perfection of which they are capable. These principles hardly find objects in the solitary state of nature. There the principle of action rises no higher at farthest than natural affection towards one's offspring. There personal or family wants entirely engross the creature's attention and labour, and allow no leisure, or, if they did, no exercise for views and affections of a more enlarged kind. In solitude all are employed in the same way, in providing for the animal life. And even after their utmost labour and care, single and unaided by the industry of others, they find but a sorry supply of their wants, and a feeble precarious security against dangers from wild beasts, from inclement skies and seasons, from the mistakes or petulant passions of their fellow-creatures, from their preference of themselves to their neighbours, and from all the little exorbitances of self-love. But in society, the mutual aids which men give and receive shorten the labours of each, and the combined strength and reason of individuals give security and protection to the whole body. There is both a variety and subordination of genius among mankind. Some are formed to lead and direct others; to contrive plans of happiness for individuals, and of government for communities; to take in a public interest; to invent laws and arts, and superintend their execution; and, in short, to refine and civilize human life. Others, who have not such good heads, may have as honest hearts, a truly public spirit, love of liberty, hatred of corruption and tyranny, a generous submission to laws, order, and public institutions, and an extensive philanthropy. And others, who have none of those capacities either of heart, or head, may be well formed for manual exercises and bodily labour. The former of these principles have no scope in solitude, where a man's thoughts and concerns do all either center in himself, or extend no farther than a family; into which little circle all the duty and virtue of the solitary mortal is crowded. But society finds proper objects and exercises for every genius, and the noblest objects and exercises for the noblest geniuses, and for the highest principles in the human constitution: particularly for that warmest and most divine passion, which God hath kindled in our bosoms, the inclination of doing good, and reverencing our nature; which may find here both employment, and the most exquisite satisfaction. In society a man has not only more leisure, but better opportunities of applying his talents with much greater perfection and success, especially as he is furnished with the joint advice and assistance of his fellow-creatures, who are now more closely united one with the other, and sustain a common relation to the same moral system, or community. This then is an object proportioned to his most enlarged social affections, and in serving it he finds scope for the exercise and refinement of his highest intellectual and moral powers. Therefore society, or a state of civil government, rests on these two principal pillars; "that in it we find security against those evils which are unavoidable in solitude; and obtain those goods, some of which cannot be obtained at all, and others not so well, in that state, where men depend solely on their individual sagacity and industry."

From this short detail it appears that man is a social creature, and formed for a social state; and that society, being adapted to the higher principles and definitions of his nature, must, of necessity, be his natural state.

The duties suited to that state, and resulting from those principles and definitions, or, in other words, from our social passions and social connections, or relation to a public system, are love of our country, resignation and obedience to the laws, public spirit, love of liberty, sacrifice of life and all to the public, and the like.

Love of our country is one of the noblest passions that can warm and animate the human breast. It includes all the limited and particular affections to our parents, children, friends, neighbours, fellow-citizens, countrymen. It ought to direct and limit their more confined and partial actions within their proper and natural bounds, and never let them encroach on those sacred and first regards we owe to the great public to which we belong. Were we solitary creatures, detached from the rest of mankind, and without any capacity of comprehending a public interest, or without affections leading us to desire and pursue it, it would not be our duty to mind it, nor criminal to neglect it. But, as we are parts of the public system, and are not only capable of taking in large views of its interests, but by the strongest affections connected with it, and prompted to take a share of its concerns, we are under the most sacred ties to prosecute its security and welfare with the utmost ardor, especially in times of public trial. This love of our country does not import an attachment to any particular soil, climate, or spot of earth, where perhaps we first drew our breath, though those natural ideas are often associated with the moral ones, and, like external signs or symbols, help to ascertain and bind them; but it imports an affection to that moral system, or community, which is governed by the same laws and magistrates, and whose several parts are variously connected one with the other, and all united upon the bottom of a common interest. Perhaps indeed every member of the community cannot comprehend so large an object, especially if it extends through large provinces, provinces, and over vast tracts of land; and still less can be formed such an idea, if there is no public, i.e., if all are subjected to the caprice and unlimited will of one man: but the preference the generality shew to their native country, the concern and longing after it which they express when they have been long absent from it, the labours they undertake and sufferings they endure to save or serve it, and the peculiar attachment they have to their countrymen, evidently demonstrate that the passion is natural, and never fails to exert itself, when it is fairly disengaged from foreign clogs, and is directed to its proper object. Where-ever it prevails in its genuine vigour and extent, it swallows up all fordid and selfish regards; it conquers the love of ease, power, pleasure and wealth; nay, when the amiable partialities of friendship, gratitude, private affection, or regard to a family come in competition with it, it will teach us bravely to sacrifice all, in order to maintain the rights and promote or defend the honour and happiness of our country.

Resignation and obedience to the laws and orders of the society to which we belong, are political duties necessary to its very being and security, without which it must soon degenerate into a state of licence and anarchy. The welfare, nay, the nature of civil society, requires that there should be a subordination of orders or diversity of ranks and conditions in it;—that certain men, or orders of men, be appointed to superintend and manage such affairs as concern the public safety and happiness;—that all have their particular provinces assigned them;—that such a subordination be settled among them, as none of them may interfere with another;—and finally, that certain rules or common measures of action be agreed on, by which each is to discharge his respective duty to govern or be governed, and all may concur in securing the order and promoting the felicity of the whole political body. Those rules of action are the laws of the community; and those different orders are the several officers, or magistrates, appointed by the public to explain them, and superintend or assist in their execution. In consequence of this settlement of things, it is the duty of each individual to obey the laws enacted, to submit to the executors of them with all due deference and homage according to their respective ranks and dignity, as to the keepers of the public peace, and the guardians of public liberty; to maintain his own rank, and perform the functions of his own station with diligence, fidelity, and incorruption. The superiority of the higher orders, or the authority with which the state has invested them, entitle them, especially if they employ their authority well, to the obedience and submission of the lower, and to a proportionable honour and respect from all. The subordination of the lower ranks claims protection, defence, and security from the higher. And the laws, being superior to all, require the obedience and submission of all; being the last resort, beyond which there is no decision or appeal.

Public spirit, heroic zeal, love of liberty, and the other political duties, do, above all others, recommend those who practise them to the admiration and homage of mankind; because, as they are the offspring of the noblest minds, so are they the parents of the greatest blessings to society. Yet, exalted as they are, it is only in equal and free governments where they can be exercised and have their due effect: for there only does a true public prevail, and there only is the public good made the standard of the civil constitution. As the end of society is the common interest and welfare of the people associated, this end must of necessity be the supreme law or common standard by which the particular rules of action of the several members of the society towards each other are to be regulated. But a common interest can be no other than that which is the result of the common reason, or common feelings of all. Private men, or a particular order of men, have interests and feelings peculiar to themselves, and of which they may be good judges; but these may be separate from, and often contrary to the interests and feelings of the rest of the society; and therefore they can have no right to make, much less to impose, laws on their fellow-citizens, inconsistent with, or opposite to, those interests and those feelings. Therefore a society, a government, a real public, truly worthy the name; and not a confederacy of banditti, a clan of lawless savages, or a band of slaves under the whip of a master; must be such a one as consists of freemen, chusing or consenting to laws themselves, or, since it often happens that they cannot assemble and act in a collective body, delegating a sufficient number of representatives, i.e., such a number as shall most fully comprehend, and most equally represent, their common feelings and common interests, to digest and vote laws for the conduct and control of the whole body the most agreeable to those common feelings and common interests.

A society thus constituted by common reason, and formed on the plan of a common interest, becomes immediately an object of public attention, public veneration, public obedience, a public and inviolable attachment, which ought neither to be seduced by bribes, nor awed by terrors; an object, in fine, of all those extensive and important duties which arise from so glorious a confederacy. To watch over such a system; to contribute all he can to promote its good by his reason, his ingenuity, his strength, and every other ability, whether natural or acquired; to resist, and to the utmost of his power defeat, every encroachment upon it, whether carried on by secret corruption, or open violence; and to sacrifice his ease, his wealth, his power, nay life itself, and, what is dearer still, his family and friends, to defend or save it; is the duty, the honour, the interest, and the happiness of every citizen; it will make him venerable and beloved while he lives, be lamented and honoured if he falls in so glorious a cause, and transmit his name with immortal renown to the latest posterity.

As the people are the fountain of power and authority, the original seat of majesty, the authors of laws, and the creators of officers to execute them; if they shall find the power they have conferred abused by their trustees, their majesty violated by tyranny or by usurpation, their authority prostituted to support violence or screen corruption, the laws grown pernicious through accidents unforeseen or unavoidable, or rendered ineffectual thro' the infidelity and corruption of the executors of them; then it is their right, and what is their right is their duty. ty, to resume that delegated power, and call their trustees to an account; to resist the usurpation, and extirpate the tyranny; to restore their fullness majesty and profited authority; to suspend, alter, or abrogate those laws, and punish their unfaithful and corrupt officers. Nor is it the duty only of the united body, but every member of it ought, according to his respective rank, power, and weight in the community, to concur in advancing and supporting those glorious designs.

Duty to God.

Of all the relations which the human mind sustains, that which subsists between the Creator and his creatures, the Supreme Lawgiver and his subjects, is the highest and the best. This relation arises from the nature of a creature in general, and the constitution of the human mind in particular; the noblest powers and affections of which point to an Universal Mind, and would be imperfect and abortive without such a direction. How lame then must that system of morals be, which leaves a Deity out of the question! How discomfate, and how destitute of its firmest support!

It does not appear, from any true history or experience of the mind's progress, that any man, by any formal deduction of his discursive powers, ever reasoned himself into the belief a God. Whether such a belief is only some natural anticipation of soul; or is derived from father to son, and from one man to another, in the way of tradition; or is suggested to us in consequence of an immutable law of our nature, on beholding the august aspect and beautiful order of the universe; we will not pretend to determine. What seems most agreeable to experience is, that a sense of its beauty and grandeur, and the admirable fitness of one thing to another in its vast apparatus, leads the mind necessarily and unavoidably to a perception of design, or of a designing cause, the origin of all, by a progress as simple and natural as that by which a beautiful picture or a fine building suggests to us the idea of an excellent artist. For it seems to hold universally true, that wherever we discern a tendency or cooperation of things towards a certain end, or producing a common effect; there, by a necessary law of association, we apprehend design, a designing energy or cause: See Metaphysics. As we conceive this Being or First Cause before all, above all, and greater than all, we naturally, and without reasoning, ascribe to him every kind of perfection, wisdom, power, and goodness without bounds, existing through all time, and pervading all space. We apply to him those glorious epithets of our Creator, Preserver, Benefactor, the Supreme Lord and Law-giver of the whole society of rational intelligent creatures. Not only the imperfections and wants of our being and condition, but some of the noblest instincts and affections of our minds, connect us with this great and universal nature. The mind, in its progress from object to object, from one character and prospect of beauty to another, finds some blemish or deficiency in each; and soon exhausts or grows weary and dissatisfied with its subject: it sees no character of excellency among men, equal to that pitch of esteem which it is capable of exerting; no object within the compass of human things adequate to the strength of its affection. Nor can it stop anywhere in this self-expansive progress, or find repose after its highest flights, till it arrives at a Being of unbounded greatness and worth, on whom it may employ its sublimest powers without exhausting the subject, and give scope to the utmost force and fullness of its love without satiety or disgust. So that the nature of this Being corresponds to the nature of man; nor can his intelligent and moral powers obtain their entire end, but on the supposition of such a Being, and without a real sympathy and communication with him. The native propensity of the mind to reverence whatever is great and wonderful in nature, finds a proper object of homage in him who spread out the heavens and the earth, and who sustains and governs the whole of things. The admiration of beauty, the love of order, and the complacency we feel in goodness, must rise to the highest pitch, and attain the full vigour and joy of their operations, when they unite in Him who is the sum and source of all perfection.

It is evident, from the slightest survey of morals, that how punctual forever one may be in performing the duties which result from our relations to mankind; yet to be quite deficient in performing those which arise from our relation to the Almighty, must argue a strange perversion of reason or depravity of heart. If imperfect degrees of worth attract our veneration, and if the want of it would imply an insensibility, or; which is worse, an aversion to merit; what lameness of affection, and immorality of character, must it be, to be unaffected with, and much more to be ill-affected to, a Being of superlative worth! To love society, or particular members of it, and yet to have no sense of our connection with its Head, no affection to our common Parent and Benefactor; to be concerned about the approbation or censure of our fellow-creatures, and yet to feel nothing of this kind towards Him who sees and weighs our actions with unerring wisdom and justice, and can fully reward or punish them; betrays equal madness and partiality of mind. It is plain, therefore, beyond all doubt, that some regards are due to the Great Father of all, in whom every lovely and adorable quality combines to inspire veneration and homage.

As it has been observed already, that our affections depend on our opinions of their objects, and generally keep pace with them, it must be of the highest importance, and seems to be among the first duties we owe to the Author of our being, "to form the least imperfect, since we cannot form perfect conceptions of his character and administration." For such conceptions, thoroughly imbibed, will render our religion rational, and our dispositions refined. If our opinions are diminutive and distorted, our religion will be superstitious, and our temper obnoxious. The foundation, then, of all true religion is a rational faith. And of a rational faith these seem to be the chief articles: To believe, "that an infinite all-perfect Mind exists, who has no opposite nor any separate interest from that of his creatures—that he superintends and governs all creatures and things—that his goodness extends to all his creatures, in different degrees indeed, according to their respective natures, but without any partiality or envy—that he does every thing for the best," or in a subserviency to the perfection and happiness of the whole;—particularly, that he directs and governs the affairs of men,—inspects their actions,—distinguishes the good from the bad,—loves and befriends the former,—is displeased with and pities the latter in this world,—and will, according to their respective deserts, reward the one, and punish the other in the next:—that, in fine, he is always carrying on a scheme of virtue and happiness through an unlimited duration,—and is ever guiding the universe through its successive stages and periods, to higher degrees of perfection and felicity.” This is true theism, the glorious scheme of divine faith; a scheme exhibited in all the works of God, and executed through his whole administration.

This faith, well-founded and deeply felt, is nearly connected with a true moral taste, and hath a powerful efficacy on the temper and manners of the thief. He who admires goodness in others, and delights in the practice of it, must be conscious of a reigning order within, a rectitude and candor of heart which disposes him to entertain favourable apprehensions of men, and, from an impartial survey of things, to presume that good order and good meaning prevail in the universe; and if good meaning and good order, then an ordering and intending Mind, who is no enemy, no tyrant to his creatures, but a friend, a benefactor, an indulgent sovereign.—On the other hand, a bad man, having nothing goodly or generous to contemplate within, no right intentions, nor honesty of heart, suspects every person and every thing; and beholding nature through the gloom of a selfish and guilty mind, is either averse to the belief of a reigning order; or, if he cannot suppress the unconquerable anticipations of a governing mind, he is prone to tarnish the beauty of nature, and to impute malevolence, or blindness and impotence at least, to the Sovereign Ruler. He turns the universe into a forlorn and horrid waste; and transfers his own character to the Deity, by ascribing to him that uncommunicative grandeur, that arbitrary or revengeful spirit which he affects or admires in himself. As such a temper of mind naturally leads to atheism, or to a superstition full as bad; therefore, as far as that temper depends on the unhappy creature in whom it prevails, the propensity to atheism or superstition consequent thereto must be immoral. Farther, if it be true that the belief or sense of a Deity is natural to the mind, and the evidence of his existence reflected from his works so full as to strike even the most superficial observer with conviction; then the supplanting or corrupting that sense, or the want of due attention to that evidence, and, in consequence of both, a supine ignorance or affected unbelief of a Deity, must argue a bad temper, or an immoral turn of mind. In the case of invincible ignorance, or a very bad education, though nothing can be concluded directly against the character, yet whenever ill passions and habits pervert the judgment, and by perverting the judgment terminate in atheism, then the case becomes plainly criminal.

But let cavils determine this as they will, a true faith in the divine character and administration is generally the consequence of a virtuous state of mind. The man who is truly and habitually good, feels the love of order, of beauty, and goodness, in the strongest degree; and therefore cannot be insensible to those emanations of them which appear in all the works of God, nor help loving their Supreme Source and Model. He cannot but think, that He who has poured such beauty and goodness over all his works, must Himself delight in beauty and goodness, and what He delights in must be both amiable and happy. Some indeed there are, and it is pity there should be any such, who, through the unhappy influence of a wrong education, have entertained dark and unfriendly thoughts of a Deity and his administration, though otherwise of a virtuous temper themselves. However, it must be acknowledged, that such sentiments have, for the most part, a bad effect on the temper; and when they have not, it is because the undepraved affections of an honest heart are more powerful in their operation, than the speculative opinions of an ill-formed head.

But where-ever right conceptions of the Deity and his providence prevail, when he is considered as the inexhausted source of light and love and joy, as acting in the joint character of a father and governor, imparting an endless variety of capacities to his creatures, and supplying them with every thing necessary to their full completion and happiness, what veneration and gratitude must such conceptions thoroughly believed excite in the mind! How natural and delightful must it be to one whose heart is open to the perception of truth, and of every thing fair, great, and wonderful in nature, to contemplate and adore Him, who is the First Fair, the First Great, and First Wonderful; in whom wisdom, power and goodness dwell vitally, essentially, originally, and act in perfect concert! What grandeur is here to fill the most enlarged capacity, what beauty to engage the most ardent love, what a mass of wonders in such exuberance of perfection, to astonish and delight the human mind through an unfailing duration!

If the Deity is considered as our supreme guardian and benefactor, as the father of mercies, who loves his creatures with infinite tenderness; and in a particular manner all good men, nay, who delights in goodness even in its most imperfect degrees; what resignation, what dependence, what generous confidence, what hope in God and his all-wise providence, must arise in the soul that is possessed of such amiable views of him! All those exercises of piety, and above all a superlative esteem and love, are directed to God as to their natural, their ultimate, and indeed their only adequate object: and though the immense obligations we have received from him may excite in us more lively feelings of divine goodness than a general and abstracted contemplation of it; yet the affections of gratitude and love are themselves of the generous disinterested kind, not the result of felt interest, or views of reward. A perfect character, in which we always suppose infinite goodness, guided by unerring wisdom, and supported by almighty power, is the proper object of perfect love; and though that character suffuses to us the relation of a benefactor, yet the mind, deeply struck with that perfection, is quite lost amidst such a blaze of beauty. ty, and grows as it were insensible to those minuter irradia- tions of it upon itself. To talk, therefore, of a mer- cenary love of God, or which has fear for its principal ingredient, is equally impious and absurd. If we do not love the loveliest object in the universe for his own sake, no prospect of good or fear of ill can ever bribe our e- steem, or captivate our love. These affections are too noble to be bought or sold, or bartered in the way of gain; worth, or merit, as their object, and their reward is something similar in kind. Whoever indulges such sentiments and affections towards the Deity, must be con- firmed in the love of virtue, in a desire to imitate its all- perfect Pattern, and in a cheerful security that all his great concerns, those of his friends and of the universe, shall be absolutely safe under the conduct of unerring wis- dom and unbounded goodness. It is in his care and providence alone that the good man, who is anxious for the happiness of all, finds perfect serenity, a serenity neither ruffled by partial ill, nor fouled by private disap- pointment.

When we consider the unstained purity and absolute per- fection of the divine nature, and reflect withal on the imperfection and various blemishes of our own, we must sink, or be convinced we ought to sink, into the deepest humility and prostration of soul before Him who is so wonderfully great and holy. When, farther, we call to mind what low and languid feelings we have of the Divine Presence and Majesty; what intensibility of his fatherly and universal goodness, nay, what ungrateful returns we have made to it; how far we come short of the perfection of his law, and the dignity of our own nature; how much we have indulged to the selfish passions, and how little to the benevolent ones; we must be conscious that it is our duty to repent of a temper and conduct so unworthy our nature, and unbecoming our obligations to its Author, and to resolve and endeavour to act a wiser and better part for the future.

Nevertheless, from the character which his works ex- hibit of him, from those delays or alleviations of punish- ment which offenders often experience, and from the merciful tenor of his administration in many other in- stances, the sincere penitent may entertain good hopes that his Parent and Judge will not be strict to mark iniquity, but will be propitious and favourable to him, if he honestly endeavours to avoid his former practices, and subdue his former habits, and to live in a greater conformity to the divine will for the future. If any doubts or fears should still remain, how far it may be consistent with the recti- tude and equity of the divine government to let his ini- quities pass unpunished; yet he cannot think it unsuitable to his paternal clemency and wisdom to contrive a method of retrieving the penitent offender, that shall unite and reconcile the majesty and mercy of his government. If reason cannot of itself suggest such a scheme, it gives at least some ground to expect it. But though natural reli- gion cannot let in more light and assurance on so interesting a subject, yet it will teach the humble thief to wait with great submission for any farther intimations it may please the Supreme Governor to give of his will; examine with candour and impartiality whatever evidence shall be pro- posed to him of a divine revelation, whether that evidence is natural or supernatural; to embrace it with veneration and cheerfulness, if the evidence is clear and convincing; and finally, if it bring to light any new relations or con- nections, natural religion will persuade its sincere votary faithfully to comply with the obligations, and perform the duties which result from those relations and connections. —This is theism, piety, the completion of morality!

We must further observe, that all those affections which we supposed to regard the Deity as their immediate and primary object, are vital energies of the soul, and conse- quently exert themselves into act; and like all its other energies, gain strength or greater activity by that exertion. It is therefore our duty, as well as highest interest, often, at stated times, and by decent and solemn acts, to con- template and adore the great Original of our existence, the Parent of all beauty, and of all good; to express our ve- neration and love, by an awful and devout recognition of his perfections; and to evidence our gratitude, by celebra- ting his goodness, and thankfully acknowledging all his benefits. It is likewise our duty, by proper exercises of fear and humiliation, to confess our ingratitude and folly; to signify our dependence on God, and our confi- dence in his goodness, by imploring his blessing and gra- cious concurrence in afflicting the weakness, and curing the corruptions of our nature; and finally, to testify our sense of his authority, and our faith in his government, by de- voting ourselves to do his will, and resigning ourselves to his disposal. These duties are not therefore obligatory, because the Deity needs or can be profited by them; but as they are apparently decent and moral; suitable to the relations he sustains of our Creator, Benefactor, Law-giver and Judge; expressive of our state and obligations; and improving to our tempers, by making us more rational, social, godlike, and consequently more happy.

We have now considered internal piety, or the worship of the mind, that which is in spirit and in truth; we shall conclude the section with a short account of that which is external. External worship is founded on the same prin- ciples as internal, and of a strict moral obligation. It is either private or public. Devotion, that is inward, or purely intellectual, is too spiritual and abstracted an op- eration for the bulk of mankind. The operations of their minds, such especially as are employed on the most sub- lime immaterial objects, must be assisted by their outward organs, or by some help from the imagination, otherwise they will be soon dissipated by sensible impressions, or grow tiresome if too long continued. Ideas are such fleeting things that they must be fixed, and so subtle that they must be expressed and delineated, as it were, by sensible marks and images; otherwise we cannot attend at them, nor be much affected to them. Therefore verbal adora- tion, prayer, praise, thanksgiving, and confession, are ad- mirable aids to inward devotion, fix our attention, com- pose and enliven our thoughts, impress us more deeply with a sense of the awful presence in which we are, and, by a natural and mechanical sort of influence, tend to heighten those devout feelings and affections which we ought to entertain, and after this manner reduce into for- mal and explicit act.

This holds true in an higher degree in the case of pub- lic worship, where the presence of our fellow-creatures, and the powerful contagion of the social affections, con- spire to kindle and spread the devout flame with greater energy. energy. To conclude: As God is the parent and head of the social system; as he has formed us for a social state; as by one we find the best security against the ills of life, and in the other enjoy its greatest comforts; and as, by means of both, our nature attains its highest improvement and perfection; and moreover, as there are public blessings and crimes in which we all share in some degree, and public wants and dangers to which all are exposed; it is therefore evident, that the various and solemn offices of public religion, are duties of indispensable moral obligation, among the best cements of society, the firmest prop of government, and the fairest ornament of both.

Of Practical Ethics, or the Culture of the Mind.

We have now gone through a particular detail of the several duties we owe to ourselves, to society, and to God. In considering the first order of duties, we just touched on the methods of acquiring the different kinds of goods which we are led by nature to pursue; only we left the consideration of the method of acquiring the moral goods of the mind to a section by itself, because of its singular importance. This section, then, will contain a brief enumeration of the arts of acquiring virtuous habits, and of eradicating vicious ones, as far as is consistent with the brevity of such a work; a subject of the utmost difficulty as well as importance in morals; to which, nevertheless, the least attention has been generally given by moral writers, especially those of a modern date. This will properly follow a detail of duty, as it will direct us to such means or helps as are most necessary and conducive to the practice of it.

In the first part of this inquiry we traced the order in which the passions shoot up in the different periods of human life. That order is not accidental, nor dependent on the caprice of men, or the influence of custom and education; but arises from the original constitution and laws of our nature; of which this is one, viz., "That sensible objects make the first and strongest impressions on the mind." These, by means of our outward organs, being conveyed to the mind, become objects of its attention on which it reflects when the outward objects are no longer present, or, in other words, when the impressions upon the outward organs cease. These objects of the mind's reflection are called ideas or images. Towards these, by another law of our nature, we are not altogether indifferent; but correspondent movements of desire or aversion, love or hatred, arise, according as the objects of which they are images or copies made an agreeable or disagreeable impression on our organs. Those ideas and affections which we experience in the first period of life, we refer to the body, or to sense; and the taste which is formed towards them, we call a sensible, or a merely natural taste; and the objects corresponding to them we in general call good or pleasant.

But, as the mind moves forward in its course, it extends its views, and receives a new and more complex set of ideas, in which it observes uniformity, variety, similitude, symmetry of parts, reference to an end, novelty, grandeur. These compose a vast train and diversity of imagery, which the mind compounds, divides, and moulds into a thousand forms, in the absence of those objects which first introduced it. And this more complicated imagery suggests a new train of desires and affections, full as sprightly and engaging as any which have yet appeared. This whole class of perceptions or impressions is referred to the imagination, and forms an higher taste than the sensible, and which has an immediate and mighty influence on the finer passions of our nature, and is commonly termed a fine taste.

The objects which correspond to this taste we use to call beautiful, harmonious, great, or wonderful, or, in general, by the name of beauty.

The mind still pushing onwards, and increasing its stock of ideas, ascends from those to an higher species of objects, viz., the order and mutual relations of minds to each other, their reciprocal affections, characters, actions, and various aspects. In these it discovers a beauty, a grandeur, a decorum more interesting and alluring than in any of the former kinds. These objects, or the images of them, passing in review before the mind, do, by a necessary law of our nature, call forth another and nobler set of affections, as admiration, esteem, love, honour, gratitude, benevolence, and others of the like tribe. This class of perceptions, and their correspondent affections, we refer, because of their objects (manners,) to a moral sense; and call the taste or temper they excite, moral; and the objects which are agreeable to this taste or temper we denominate by the general name of moral beauty; in order to distinguish it from the other, which is termed natural.

These different sets of ideas or images are the materials about which the mind employs itself; which it blends, ranges, and diversifies ten thousand different ways. It feels a strong propensity to connect and associate those ideas among which it observes any similitude, or any aptitude, whether original and natural, or customary and artificial, to suggest each other. See Metaphysics.

But whatever the reasons are, whether similitude, coexistence, causality, or any other aptitude or relation, why any two or more ideas are connected by the mind at first, it is an established law of our nature, "That when two or more ideas have often started in company, they form so strong an union, that it is very difficult ever after to separate them." Thus the lover cannot separate the idea of merit from his mistress; the courtier that of dignity from his title or ribbon; the miser that of happiness from his bags.—It is these associations of worth or happiness with any set of objects or images that form our taste or complex idea of good. By another law of our nature, "our affections follow and are governed by this taste; and to these affections our character and conduct are similar and proportioned, on the general tenor of which our happiness principally depends."

As all our leading passions, then, depend on the direction which our taste takes, and as it is always of the same strain with our leading affections, it is worth while to inquire a little more particularly how these are formed, in order to detect the secret sources from whence our passions derive their principal strength, their various rises

and falls. For this will give us the true key to their management, and let us into the right method of correcting the bad, and improving the good.

No kind of objects makes so powerful an impression on us as those which are immediately impressed on our senses, or strongly painted on our imaginations. Whatever is purely intellectual, as abstracted or scientific truths, the subtle relations and difference of things, has a fainter sort of existence in the mind; and, though it may exercise and whet the memory, the judgment, or the reasoning powers, gives hardly any impulse at all to the active powers, the passions, which are the main springs of motion. On the other hand, were the mind entirely under the direction of sense, and impresible only by such objects as are present and strike some of the outward organs, we should then be precisely in the state of the brute creation, and be governed solely by instinct or appetite, and have no power to controul whatever impressions are made upon us. Nature has therefore endued us with a middle faculty, wonderfully adapted to our mixed state; which holds partly of sense, and partly of reason; being strongly allied to the former, and the common receptacle in which all the notices that come from that quarter are treasured up; and yet greatly subservient and ministerial to the latter, by giving a body, a coherence, and beauty to its conceptions. This middle faculty is called the imagination, one of the most busy and fruitful powers of the mind. Into this common storehouse are likewise carried all those moral images or forms which are derived from our moral faculties of perception; and there they often undergo new changes and appearances, by being mixed and wrought up with the images and forms of sensible or natural things. By this coalition of imagery, natural beauty is dignified and heightened by moral qualities and perfections, and moral qualities are at once exhibited and set off by natural beauty. The sensible beauty, or good, is refined from its dross by partaking of the moral; and the moral receives a stamp, a visible character and currency from the sensible.

As we are first of all accustomed to sensible impressions and sensible enjoyments, we contract early a sensual relish or love of pleasure in the lower sense of the word. In order, however, to justify this relish, the mind, as it becomes open to higher perceptions of beauty and good, borrows from thence a nobler set of images, as fine taste, generosity, social affection, friendship, good-fellowship, and the like; and, by dressing out the old pursuits with these new ornaments, gives them an additional dignity and lustre. By these ways the desire of a table, love of finery, intrigue, and pleasure, are vastly increased beyond their natural pitch, having an impulse combined of the force of the natural appetites and of the superadded strength of those passions which tend to the moral species.

—When the mind becomes more sensible to those objects or appearances, in which it perceives beauty, uniformity, grandeur, and harmony, as fine cloaths, elegant furniture, plate, pictures, gardens, houses, equipage, the beauty of animals, and particularly the attractions of the sex; to these objects the mind is led by nature, or taught by custom, the opinion and example of others, to annex certain ideas of moral character, dignity, decorum, honour, liberality, tenderness, and active or social enjoyment. The consequence of this association is, that the objects to which these are annexed, must rise in their value, and be pursued with proportionable ardor. The enjoyment of them is often attended with pleasure; and the mere possession of them, where that is wanting, frequently draws respect from one's fellow-creatures; this respect is, by many, thought equivalent to the pleasure of enjoyment. Hence it happens, that the idea of happiness is connected with the mere possession; which is therefore eagerly sought after, without any regard to the generous use, or honourable employment. Thus the passion resting on the means, not the end, i.e., losing sight of its natural object, becomes wild and extravagant.

In fine, any object, or external denomination, a staff, a garter, a cup, a crown, a title, may become a moral badge or emblem of merit, magnificence, or honour, according as these have been found or thought by the possessors or admirers of them to accompany them; yet, by the deception formerly mentioned, the merit or the conduct which entitled, or should entitle, to those marks of distinction, shall be forgot or neglected, and the badges themselves be passionately affected, or pursued, as including every excellency. If these are attained by any means, all the concomitants which nature, custom, or accidents have joined to them, will be supposed to follow of course. Thus moral ends, with which the unhappy admirer is apt to colour over his passion and views, will, in his opinion, justify the most immoral means, as prostitution, adulation, fraud, treachery, and every species of knavery, whether more open or more disguised.

When men are once engaged in active life, and find that wealth and power, generally called interest, are the great avenues to every kind of enjoyment, they are apt to throw in many engaging moral forms to the object of their pursuit, in order to justify their passion, and varnish over the measures they take to gratify it; as, independency on the vices or passions of others, provision and security to themselves and friends, prudent economy or well-placed charity, social communication, superiority to their enemies who are all villains, honourable service, and many other ingredients of merit. To attain such capacities of usefulness or enjoyment, what arts, nay, what meanest can be thought blamable by those cool pursuers of interest! —Nor have they, whom the gay world is pleased to indulge with the title of men of pleasure, their imaginations less pregnant with moral images, with which they never fail to ennoble, or, if they cannot do that, to palliate their grofs pursuits. Thus, admiration of wit, of sentiments and merit, friendship, love, generous sympathy, mutual confidence, giving and receiving pleasure, are the ordinary ingredients with which they season their gallantry and pleasurable entertainments; and by which they impose on themselves, and endeavour to impose on others, that their amours are the joint issue of good sense and virtue.

These associations, variously combined and proportioned by the imagination, form the chief private passions which govern the lives of the generality; as the love of action, of pleasure, power, wealth, and fame: they influence the defensive, and affect the public passions, and raise joy joy or sorrow, as they are gratified or disappointed. So that, in effect, these associations of good and evil, beauty and deformity, and the passions they raise, are the main hinges of life and manners, and the great sources of our happiness or misery. It is evident, therefore, that the whole of moral culture must depend on giving a right direction to the leading passions, and duly proportioning them to the value of the objects or goods pursued, under what name forever they may appear.

Now, in order to give them this right direction and due proportion, it appears, from the foregoing detail, that those associations of ideas, upon which the passions depend, must be duly regulated; that is to say, as an exorbitant passion for wealth, pleasure, or power, flows from an association or opinion that more beauty and good, whether natural or moral, enters into the enjoyment or possession of them, than really belongs to either; therefore, in restoring those passions to their just proportion, we must begin with correcting the opinion, or breaking the false association; or, in other words, we must decompose the complex phantom of happiness or good, which we fondly admire; disunite those ideas, that have no natural alliance; and separate the original idea of wealth, power, or pleasure, from the foreign mixtures incorporated with it, which enhance its value, or give it its chief power to enchant and seduce the mind. For instance, let it be considered how poor and inconsiderable a thing wealth is, if it be disjointed from real use, or from ideas of capacity in the possessor to do good, from independency, generosity, provision for a family or friends, and social communication with others. By this standard let its true value be fixed; let its misapplication, or unbenevolent enjoyment, be accounted forid and infamous; and nothing worthy or estimable be ascribed to the mere possession of it, which is not borrowed from its generous use.

If that complex form of good which is called pleasure, engages us, let it be analyzed into its constituent principles, or those allurements it draws from the heart and imagination, in order to heighten the low part of the indulgence; let the separate and comparative moment of each be distinctly ascertained, and deduced from that gross part; and this remainder of the accumulative enjoyment will dwindle down into a poor, insipid, transitory thing. In proportion as the opinion of the good pursued abates, the admiration must decay, and the passion lose strength of course. One effectual way to lower the opinion, and consequently to weaken the habit founded on it, is to practice lesser pieces of self-denial, or to abstain, to a certain pitch, from the pursuit or enjoyment of the favorite object; and, that this may be the more easily accomplished, one must avoid those occasions, that company, those places, and the other circumstances that inflamed one, and endeared the other: And, as a counter-process, let higher or even different enjoyments be brought in view, other passions played upon the former, different places frequented, other exercises tried, company kept with persons of a different or more correct way of thinking both in natural and moral subjects.

As much depends on our setting out well in life, let the youthful fancy, which is apt to be very florid and luxuriant, be early accustomed, by instruction, example, and significant moral exercises, nay, by looks, gestures, and every other testimony of just approbation or blame, to annex ideas of merit, honour, and happiness—not to birth, dress, rank, beauty, fortune, power, popularity, and the like outward things,—but to moral and truly virtuous qualities, and to those enjoyments which spring from a well-informed judgment, and a regular conduct of the affections, especially those of the social and disinterested kind. Such dignified forms of beauty and good, often suggested, and, by moving pictures and examples, warmly recommended to the imagination, enforced by the authority of conscience, and demonstrated by reason to be the surest means of enjoyment, and the only independent, un-deprived and durable goods, will be the best counter-balance to meaner passions, and the firmest foundation and security to virtue.

It is of great importance to the forming a just taste, or pure and large conceptions of happiness, to study and understand human nature well, to remember what a complicated system it is, particularly to have deeply imprinted on our mind that gradation of senses, faculties, and powers of enjoyment formerly mentioned, and the subdivision of goods resulting from thence, which nature points out, and the experience of mankind confirms; who, when they think seriously, and are not under the immediate influence of some violent prejudice or passion, prefer not the pleasures of action, contemplation, society, and most exercises and joys of the moral kind, as friendship, natural affection, and the like, to all sensual gratifications whatsoever? Where the different species of pleasure are blended into one complex form, let them be accurately distinguished, and be referred each to its proper faculty and sense, and examined apart what they have peculiar, what common with others, and what foreign and adventitious. Let wealth, grandeur, luxury, love, fame, and the like, be tried by this test, and their true alloy will be found out.—Let it be farther considered, whether the mind may not be easy, and enjoy itself greatly, though it want many of those elegancies and superfluities of life which some possess, or that load of wealth and power which others eagerly pursue, and under which they groan. Let the difficulty of attaining, the precariousness of possessing, and the many abatements in enjoying overgrown wealth and envied greatness, of which the weary possessors so frequently complain, as the hurry of business, the burden of company, of paying attendance to the few, and giving it to the many, the cares of keeping, the fears of losing, and the desires of increasing what they have, and the other troubles which accompany this pitiful drudgery and pompous servitude; let these and the like circumstances be often considered that are conducive to the removing or lessening the opinion of such goods, and the attendant passion or set of passions will decay of course.

Let the peculiar bent of our nature and character be observed, whether we are most inclined to form associations and relish objects of the sensible, intellectual, or moral kind. Let that which has the ascendant be particularly watched; let it be directed to right objects, be improved by proportioned exercises, and guarded by proper checks from an opposite quarter. Thus, the sensible turn turn may be exalted by the intellectual and a taste for the beauty of the fine arts, and both may be made subservient to convey and rivet sentiments highly moral and public-spirited. This inward spirit must extend to the strength and weaknesses of one's nature, one's condition, connections, habitudes, fortune, studies, acquaintance, and the other circumstances of one's life; from which every man will form the justest estimate of his own dispositions and character, and the best rules for correcting and improving them. And, in order to do this with more advantage, let those times or critical seasons be watched when the mind is best disposed towards a change, and let them be improved by vigorous resolutions, promises, or whatever else will engage the mind to persevere in virtue. Let the conduct, in fine, be often reviewed, and the causes of its corruption or improvement be carefully observed.

It will greatly conduce to refine the moral taste and strengthen the virtuous temper, to accustom the mind to the frequent exercise of moral sentiments and determinations, by reading history, poetry, particularly of the picturesque and dramatic kind, the study of the fine arts; by conversing with the most eminent for good sense and virtue; but, above all, by frequent and repeated acts of humanity, compassion, friendship, politeness, and hospitality. It is exercise gives health and strength. He that reasons most frequently becomes the wisest, and most enjoys the pleasures of wisdom. He who is most often affected by objects of compassion in poetry, history, or real life, will have his soul most open to pity and its delightful pains and duties. So he also who practises most diligently the offices of kindness and charity, will by it cultivate that disposition, from whence all his pretensions to personal merit must arise, his present and his future happiness.

An useful and honourable employment in life will administer a thousand opportunities of this kind and greatly strengthen a sense of virtue and good affections, which must be nourished by right training, as well as our understandings. For such an employment, by enlarging one's experience, giving an habit of attention and caution, or obliging one, from necessity or interest, to keep a guard over the passions, and study the outward decencies and appearancies of virtue, will by degrees produce good habit, and at length insinuate the love of virtue and honesty for its own sake.

It is a great inducement to the exercise of benevolence, to view human nature in a favourable light, to observe the characters and circumstances of mankind on the fairest sides, to put the best constructions on their actions they will bear, and to consider them as the result of partial and mistaken, rather than ill affections, or, at worst, as the excellences of a pardonable self-love, seldom or never the effects of pure malice.

Above all, the nature and consequences of virtue and vice, their consequences being the law of our nature and will of heaven; the light in which they appear to our supreme Parent and Law-giver, and the reception they will meet with from him; must be often attended to. The exercises of piety, adoration and praise of the Divine Excellency, invocation of and dependence on his aid, confession, thanksgiving, and resignation, are habitually to be indulged, and frequently performed, not only as medicinal, but highly improving to the temper.

To conclude: It will be of admirable efficacy towards eradicating bad habits, and implanting good ones, frequently to contemplate human life as the great nursery of our future and immortal existence, as that state of probation in which we are to be educated for a divine life; to remember that our virtues or vices will be immortal as ourselves, and influence our future as well as our present happiness, and therefore that every disposition and action is to be regarded as pointing beyond the present to an immortal duration. An habitual attention to this wide and important connection will give a vast compass and dignity to our sentiments and actions, a noble superiority to the pleasures and pains of life, and a generous ambition to make our virtue as immortal as our being.

Motives to Virtue from personal Happiness.

We have already considered our obligations to the practice of virtue, arising from the constitution of our nature, by which we are led to approve a certain order and economy of affections, and a certain course of action correspondent to it.—But besides this, there are several motives which strengthen and secure virtue, though not themselves of a moral kind. These are, its tendency to personal happiness, and the contrary tendency of vice.

"Personal happiness arises, either from the state of a man's own mind, or from the state and disposition of external causes towards him."

We shall first examine the "tendency of virtue to happiness with respect to the state of a man's own mind."—This is a point of the utmost consequence in morals; because, unless we can convince ourselves, or shew to others, that, by doing our duty, or fulfilling our moral obligations, we consult the greatest satisfaction of our own mind, or our highest interest on the whole, it will raise strong and often unformountable prejudices against the practice of virtue, especially whenever there arises any appearance of opposition between our duty and our satisfaction or interest. To creatures so delirious of happiness and averse to misery as we are, and often so oddly situated amidst contending passions and interests, it is necessary that virtue appear not only an honourable, but a pleasing and beneficent form. And in order to justify our choice to ourselves, as well as before others, we must ourselves feel, and be able to avow in the face of the whole world, that her ways are ways of pleasantness, and her paths the paths of peace. This will shew, beyond all contradiction, that we not only approve, but can give a sufficient reason for what we do.

Let a man in a cool hour, when he is disengaged from business, and undisturbed by passion, as such cool hours will sometimes happen, sit down, and seriously reflect with himself what state or temper of mind he would choose to feel and indulge, in order to be easy and to enjoy himself. Would he choose, for that purpose, to be in a constant dissipation and hurry of thought; to be disturbed in the exercise of his reason; to have various, and often interfering phantoms of good playing before his imagination, soliciting and distracting him by turns, now soothing him with with amusing hopes; then torturing him with anxious fears; and to approve this minute what he shall condemn the next? Would he choose to have a strong and painful sense of every petty injury; quick apprehensions of every impending evil; incessant and insatiable desires of power, wealth, honour, pleasure; an irreconcilable antipathy against all competitors and rivals; insolent and tyrannical dispositions to all below him; fawning, and at the same time envious, dispositions to all above him; with dark suspicions and jealousies of every mortal? Would he choose neither to love, nor to be beloved of any; to have no friend in whom to confide, or with whom to interchange his sentiments or designs; no favourite, on whom to bestow his kindness, or vent his passions; in fine, to be conscious of no merit with mankind, no esteem from any creature, no good affection to his Maker, no concerns for or hopes of his approbation; but, instead of all these, to hate, and know that he is hated, to contemn, and know that he is contemned by all; by the good because he is so unlike, and by the bad because he is so like themselves; to hate or to dread the very Being that made him; and, in short, to have his breast the seat of pride and pallion, petulance and revenge, deep melancholy, cool malignity, and all the other furies that ever possessed and tortured mankind?—Would our calm inquirer after happiness pitch on such a state, and such a temper of mind, as the most likely means to put him in possession of his desired ease and self-enjoyment?

Or would he rather choose a serene and easy flow of thought; a reason clear and composed; a judgment unbiased by prejudice, and undistracted by passion; a sober and well-governed fancy, which presents the images of things true and unmixed with delusive and unnatural charms, and therefore administers no improper or dangerous fuel to the passions, but leaves the mind free to choose or reject, as becomes a reasonable creature; a sweet and sedate temper, not easily ruffled by hopes or fears, prone neither to suspicion nor revenge, apt to view men and things in the fairest lights, and to bend gently to the humours of others rather than obstinately to contend with them? Would he choose such moderation and continence of mind, as neither to be ambitious of power, fond of honours, covetous of wealth, nor a slave to pleasure; a mind of course neither elated with success, nor dejected with disappointment; such a modest and noble spirit as supports power without insolence, wears honours without pride, uses wealth without profusion or parsimony; and rejoices more in giving than in receiving pleasure; such fortitude and equanimity as rises above misfortunes, or turns them into blessings; such integrity and greatness of mind, as neither flatters the vices, nor triumphs over the follies of men; as equally spurns servitude and tyranny, and will neither engage in low designs, nor abet them in others? Would he choose, in fine, such mildness and benignity of heart as takes part in all the joys, and refuses none of the sorrows of others; stands well affected to all mankind; is conscious of meriting the esteem of all, and of being beloved by the best; a mind which delights in doing good without any show, and yet arrogates nothing on that account; rejoices in loving and being beloved by its Maker, acts ever under his eye, resigns itself to his providence, and triumphs in his approbation? Which of these dispositions would be his choice, in order to be contented, serene, and happy?—The former temper is vice, the latter virtue. Where one prevails, there misery prevails, and by the generality is acknowledged to prevail. Where the other reigns, there happiness reigns, and by the confession of mankind is acknowledged to reign. The perfection of either temper is misery, or happiness, in perfection.—Therefore every approach to either extreme, is an approach to misery, or to happiness; that is to say, every degree of vice or virtue is accompanied with a proportional degree of misery or happiness.

The principal alleviations of a virtuous man's calamities are these:—that, though some of them may have been the effect of his imprudence, or weakness; yet few of them are sharpened by a sense of guilt, and none of them by a consciousness of wickedness, which surely is their keenest sting:—that they are common to him with the best of men:—that they seldom or never attack him quite unprepared, but rather guarded with a consciousness of his own sincerity and virtue, with a faith and trust in providence, and a firm resignation to its perfect orders:—that they may be improved as means of correction, or materials to give scope and stability to his virtues:—and, to name no more, they are considerably lessened, and often sweetened to him, by the general sympathy of the wife and good.

His enjoyments are more numerous, or, if less numerous, yet more intense, than those of bad men: for he shares in the joys of others by rebound; and every increase of general or particular happiness is a real addition to his own. It is true, his friendly sympathy with others subjects him to some pains which the hard-hearted wretch does not feel; yet to give a loose to it, is a kind of agreeable discharge. It is such a sorrow as he loves to indulge; a sort of pleasing anguish, that sweetly melts the mind, and terminates in a self-approving joy. Tho' the good man may want means to execute, or be disappointed in the success of his benevolent purposes; yet he is still conscious of good affections; and that consciousness is an enjoyment of a more delightful flavour than the greatest triumphs of successful vice. If the ambitious, covetous, or voluptuous, are disappointed, their passions recoil upon them with a fury proportioned to their opinion of the value of what they pursue, and their hope of success; while they have nothing within to balance the disappointment, unless it is an useful fund of pride, which however frequently turns mere accidents into mortifying affronts, and exalts grief into rage and frenzy. Whereas the meek, humble, and benevolent temper is its own immediate reward; is satisfied from within; and as it magnifies greatly the pleasure of success, so it wonderfully alleviates, and in a manner annihilates, all pain for the want of it.

As the good man is conscious of loving and wishing well to all mankind, he must be sensible of his deserving the esteem and goodwill of all; and this supposed reciprocation of social feelings, is, by the very frame of our nature, made a source of very intense and enlivening joys. By this sympathy of affections and interests he feels himself intimately united with the human race; and being being sensibly alive over the whole system, his heart receives and becomes responsive to every touch given to any part. So that he gathers contentment and delight from the pleased and happy state of those around him, from accounts and relations of such happinesses, from the very countenances, gestures, voices, and sounds even of creatures foreign to our kind, whose signs of joy and contentment he can any way discern.

Nor do those generous affections stop any other natural source of joy whatever, or deaden his sense of any innocent gratification. They rather keep the several senses and powers of enjoyment open and disengaged, intense, and uncorrupted by riot or abuse; as is evident to any one who considers the dissipated unfeeling state of men of pleasure, ambition, or interest, and compares it with the serene and gentle state of a mind at peace with itself, and friendly to all mankind, unruffled by any violent emotion, and sensible to every good-natured and alluring joy.

It were easy, by going through the different sets of affections, to show, that it is only by maintaining the proportion settled there that the mind arrives at true repose and satisfaction. If fear exceeds that proportion, it sinks into melancholy and dejection. If anger passes just bounds, it ferments into rage and revenge, or subsides into a sullen corroding gloom, which embitters every good, and renders one exquisitely sensible to every ill. The private passions, the love of honour especially, whose impulses are more generous as its effects are more diffusive, are instruments of private pleasure; but if they are disproportioned to our wants, or to the value of the several objects, or to the balance of other passions equally necessary and more amiable, they become instruments of intense pain and misery. For, being now destitute of that counterpoise which held them at a due pitch, they grow turbulent, peevish, and revengeful, the cause of constant restlessness and torment, sometimes flying out into a wild delirious joy, at other times settling into a deep splenetic grief. The concert between reason and passion is then broke: all is dissonance and distraction within. The mind is out of frame, and feels an agony proportioned to the violence of the reigning passion.

The case is much the same, or rather worse, when any of the particular kind affections are out of their natural order and proportion; as happens in the case of effeminate pity, exorbitant love, parental dotage, or any party passion, where the just regards to society are supplanted. The more social and disinterested the passion is, it breaks out into the wilder excesses, and makes the more dreadful havoc, both within and abroad, as is but too apparent in those cases where a false species of religion, honour, zeal, or party-rage, has seized on the natural enthusiasm of the mind, and worked it up to madness. It breaks through all ties natural and civil, counteracts the most sacred and solemn obligations, silences every other affection whether public or private, and transforms the most gentle natures into the most savage and inhuman.

Whereas the man who keeps the balance of affection even, is easy and serene in his motions; mild, and yet affectionate; uniform and consistent with himself; is not liable to disagreeable collisions of interests and passions; gives always place to the most friendly and humane affections; and never to dispositions or acts of resentment, but on high occasions, when the security of the private, or welfare of the public system, or the great interests of mankind necessarily require a noble indignation; and even then he observes a just measure in wrath; and last of all, he proportions every passion to the value of the object he affects, or to the importance of the end he pursues.

To sum up this part of the argument, the honest and good man has eminently the advantage of the knavish and selfish wretch in every respect. The pleasures which the last enjoys flow chiefly from external advantages and gratifications; are superficial and transitory; dished with long intervals of satiety, and frequent returns of remorse and fear; dependent on favourable accidents and conjunctions; and subjected to the humours of men. But the good man is satisfied from himself; his principal possessions lie within, and therefore beyond the reach of the caprice of men or fortune; his enjoyments are exquisite and permanent; accompanied with no inward checks to damp them, and always with ideas of dignity and self-approbation; may be tasted at any time, and in any place. The gratifications of vice are turbulent and unnatural, generally arising from the relief of passions in themselves intolerable, and issuing in tormenting reflections; often irritated by disappointment, always inflamed by enjoyment, and yet ever cloyed with repetition. The pleasures of virtue are calm and natural; flowing from the exercise of kind affections, or delightful reflections in consequence of them; not only agreeable in the prospect, but in the present feeling; they never satiate, or lose their relish; nay, rather the admiration of virtue grows stronger every day; and not only is the desire but the enjoyment heightened by every new gratification; and, unlike to most others, it is increased, not diminished, by sympathy and communication. In fine, the satisfactions of virtue may be purchased without a bribe, and possessed in the humblest as well as the most triumphant fortune; they can bear the strictest review, do not change with circumstances, nor grow old with time. Force cannot rob, nor fraud cheat us of them; and, to crown all, instead of abating, they enhance every other pleasure.

But the happy consequences of virtue are seen, not only in the internal enjoyments it affords a man, but "in the favourable disposition of external causes towards him, to which it contributes."

As virtue gives the sober possession of one's self and the command of one's passions, the consequence must be, heart's ease, and a fine natural flow of spirits, which conduct more than anything else to health and long life. Violent passions, and the excesses they occasion, gradually impair and wear down the machine. But the calm placid state of a temperate mind, and the healthful exercises in which virtue engages her faithful votaries, preserve the natural functions in full vigour and harmony, and exhilarate the spirits, which are the chief instruments of action.

It may by some be thought odd to assert, that virtue is no enemy to a man's fortune in the present state of things. things.—But if, by fortune, be meant a moderate or competent share of wealth, power, or credit, not overgrown degrees of them, what should hinder the virtuous man from obtaining that? He cannot cringe or fawn, it is true; but he can be civil and obliging as well as the knave; and surely, his civility is more alluring, because it has more manliness and grace in it than the mean adulation of the other: he cannot cheat or undermine; but he may be cautious, provident, watchful of occasions, and equally prompt with the rogue in improving them: he scorns to prostitute himself as a pander to the passions, or as a tool to the vices of mankind; but he may have as found an understanding, and as good capacities for promoting their real interests, as the veriest court-slave; and then, he is more faithful and true to those who employ him. In the common course of business, he has the same chances with the knave of acquiring a fortune, and rising in the world. He may have equal abilities, equal industry, equal attention to business; and in other respects he has greatly the advantage of him. People love better to deal with him; they can trust him more; they know he will not impose on them, nor take advantage of them, and can depend more on his word than on the oath or strongest securities of others. Whereas what is commonly called cunning, which is the offspring of ignorance, and constant companion of knavery, is not only a mean-spirited, but a very short-sighted talent, and a fundamental obstacle in the road of business. It may procure indeed immediate and petty gains; but it is attended with dreadful abatements, which do more than over-balance them, both as it sinks a man's credit when discovered, and cramps that largeness of mind, which extends to the remotest as well as the nearest interest, and takes in the most durable equally with the most transient gains. It is therefore easy to see how much a man's credit and reputation, and consequently his success, depend on his honesty and virtue.

With regard to security and peace with his neighbours, it may be thought, perhaps, that the man of a quiet forgiving temper, and a flowing benevolence and courtesy, is much exposed to injury and affronts from every proud or peevish mortal who has the power or will to do mischief. If we suppose, indeed, this quietness and gentleness of nature accompanied with cowardice or pusillanimity, this may often be the case; but in reality, the good man is bold as a lion, and so much the bolder for being the calmer. Such a person will hardly be a butt to mankind. The ill-natured will be afraid to provoke him, and the good-natured will not incline to do it. Besides, true virtue, which is conducted by reason, and exerted gracefully and without parade, is a most insinuating and commanding thing; if it cannot disarm malice and resentment at once, it will wear them out by degrees, and subdue them at length. How many have, by favours, and prudently yielding, triumphed over an enemy who would have been inflamed into tenfold rage by the fiercest opposition? In fine, goodness is the most universally popular thing that can be.

To conclude, the good man may have some enemies, but he will have more friends; and having given so many marks of private friendship or public virtue, he can hardly be destitute of a patron to protect, or a sanctuary to entertain him, or to entertain or protect his children when he is gone. Though he should have little else to leave them, he bequeaths them the fairest, and generally the most unenvied, inheritance of a good name; which, like good seed sown in the field of futurity, will often raise up unsolicited friends, and yield a benevolent harvest of unexpected charities. But should the fragrance of the parent's virtue prove offensive to a perverse or envious age, or even draw persecution on the friendless orphan, there is One in heaven, who will be more than a father to them, and recompense their parent's virtues by showering down blessings on them.

Motives to Virtue from the Being and Providence of God.

Besides the interesting motive mentioned in the last section, there are two great motives to virtue, strictly connected with human life, and resulting from the very constitution of the human mind. The first is the being and providence of God; the second is the immortality of the soul, with future rewards and punishments.

It appears from what has been said, that man, by the constitution of his nature, is designed to be a religious creature. He is intimately connected with the Deity, and necessarily dependent on him. From that connection and necessary dependence result various obligations and duties; without fulfilling which, some of his sublimest powers and affections would be incomplete and abortive. If he be likewise an immortal creature, and if his present conduct shall affect his future happiness in another state as well as in the present; it is evident, that we take only a partial view of the creature if we leave out this important property of his nature, and make a partial estimate of human life if we strike out of the account, or overlook, that part of his duration which runs out into eternity.

It is evident, that "to have a respect to the Deity in our temper and conduct, to venerate and love his character, to adore his goodness, to depend upon and resign ourselves to his providence, to seek his approbation, and act under a sense of his authority, is a fundamental part of moral virtue, and the completion of the highest destination of our nature."

But as piety is an essential part of virtue, so likewise it is a great support and enforcement to the practice of it. To contemplate and admire a being of such transcendent dignity and perfection as God, must naturally and necessarily open and enlarge the mind, give a freedom and ampleness to its powers, and a grandeur and elevation to its aims. For, "the greatness of an object, and the excellency of the act of any agent about a transcendental object, doth mightily tend to the enlargement and improvement of his faculties." Little objects, mean company, mean cares, and mean business, cramp the mind, contract its views, and give it a creeping air and deportment. But when it soars above mortal cares and mortal pursuits into the regions of divinity, and converses with the Greatest and Best of Beings, it spreads itself into a wider compass, takes higher flights in reason and goodness, and becomes Godlike in its air and manners. Virtue is, if one may say so, both the effect and cause of largeness of mind. It requires requires that one think freely, and act nobly. Now, what can conduce more to freedom of thought and dignity of action, than to conceive worthily of God, to reverence and adore his unrivalled excellency, to imitate and transcribe that excellency into our own nature, to remember our relation to him, and that we are the image and representatives of his glory to the rest of the creation? Such feelings and exercises must and will make us scorn all actions that are base, unhandsome, or unworthy our state; and the relation we stand in to God will irradiate the mind with the light of wisdom, and ennoble it with the liberty and dominion of virtue.

The influence and efficacy of religion may be considered in another light. We all know that the presence of a friend, a neighbour, or any number of spectators, but especially an august assembly of them, uses to be a considerable check upon the conduct of one who is not lost to all sense of honour and shame, and contributes to restrain many irregular fallies of passion. In the same manner we may imagine, that the awe of some Superior Mind, who is supposed privy to our secret conduct, and armed with full power to reward or punish it, will impose a restraint on us in such actions as fall not under the control or animadversion of others. If we go still higher, and suppose our inmost thoughts and darkest designs, as well as our most secret actions, to lie open to the notice of the Supreme and Universal Mind, who is both the spectator and judge of human actions; it is evident, that the belief of so august a presence, and such awful inspection, must carry a restraint and weight with it proportioned to the strength of that belief, and be an additional motive to the practice of many duties which would not have been performed without it.

It may be observed farther, that "to live under an habitual sense of the Deity and his great administration, is to be conversant with wisdom, order, and beauty, in the highest subjects, and to receive the delightful reflections and benign feelings which these excite, while they irradiate upon him from every scene of nature and providence." How improving must such views be to the mind, in dilating and exalting it above those puny interests and competitions which agitate and enflame the bulk of mankind against each other!

Motive to Virtue from the Immortality of the Soul, &c.

The other motive mentioned was the immortality of the soul, with future rewards and punishments. The metaphysical proofs of the soul's immortality, are commonly drawn—from its simple, uncompounded, and indivisible nature; from whence it is concluded, that it cannot be corrupted or extinguished by a dissolution or destruction of parts;—from its having a beginning of motion within itself; whence it is inferred, that it cannot discontinue and lose its motion;—from the different properties of matter and mind; the sluggishness and inactivity of one, and the immense activity of the other; its prodigious flight of thought and imagination; its penetration, memory, foresight, and anticipations of futurity; from whence it is concluded, that a being of so divine a nature cannot be extinguished. But as these metaphysical proofs depend on intricate reasonings concerning the nature, properties, and distinction of body and mind, with which we are not very well acquainted, they are not obvious to ordinary understandings, and are seldom so convincing, even to those of higher reach, as not to leave some doubts behind them. Therefore, perhaps, it is not so safe to rest the proof of such an important article on what many may call the subtleties of school-learning. Those proofs which are brought from analogy, from the moral constitution and phenomena of the human mind, the moral attributes of God, and the present course of things, and which are therefore called the moral arguments, are the plainest, and generally the most satisfying. We shall select only one or two from the rest.

In tracing the nature and destination of any being, we form the surest judgment from his powers of action, and the scope and limits of these, compared with his state, or that field in which they are exercised. If this being passes through different states or fields of action, and we find a succession of powers adapted to the different periods of his progress, we conclude that he was destined for those successive states, and reckon his nature progressive. If, besides the immediate set of powers which fit him for action in his present state, we observe another set which appears superfluous if he was to be confined to it, and which point to another or higher one, we naturally conclude, that he is not designed to remain in his present state, but to advance to that for which those supernumerary powers are adapted. Thus we argue, that the insect, which has wings forming or formed, and all the apparatus proper for flight, is not destined always to creep on the ground, or to continue in the torpid state of adhering to a wall, but is designed in its season to take its flight in air. Without this farther destination, the admirable mechanism of wings, and the other apparatus, would be useless and absurd. The same kind of reasoning may be applied to man, while he lives only a sort of vegetative life in the womb. He is furnished even there with a beautiful apparatus of organs, eyes, ears, and other delicate senses, which receive nourishment indeed, but are in a manner folded up, and have no proper exercise or use in their present confinement. Let us suppose some intelligent spectator, who never had any connection with man, nor the least acquaintance with human affairs, to see this odd phenomenon; a creature formed after such a manner, and placed in a situation apparently unsuitable to such various machinery; must he not be strangely puzzled about the use of his complicated structure, and reckon such a profusion of art and admirable workmanship lost on the subject; or reason, by way of anticipation, that a creature, endowed with such various, yet unexerted capacities, was destined for a more enlarged sphere of action, in which those latent capacities shall have full play? The vast variety, and yet beautiful symmetry and proportions, of the several parts and organs with which the creature is endowed, and their apt cohesion with, and dependence on, the curious receptacle of their life and nourishment, would forbid his concluding the whole to be the birth of chance, or the bungling effort of an unskilful artist, at least would make him demur a while at so harsh a sentence. But if, while he is in this state of uncertainty, we suppose him to see the babe, after a few successful struggles, struggles, throwing off his fetters, breaking loose from his little dark prison, and emerging into open day; then unfolding his reclusive and dormant powers, breathing in air, gazing at light, admitting colours, sounds, and all the fair variety of nature; immediately his doubts clear up, the propriety and excellency of the workmanship dawn upon him with full lustre, and the whole mystery of the first period is unravelled by the opening of this new scene. Though in this second period the creature lives chiefly a kind of animal life, i.e., of sense and appetite; yet by various trials and observations he gains experience, and by the gradual evolution of the powers of imagination he ripens apace for an higher life, for exercising the arts of design and imitation, and of those in which strength or dexterity are more requisite than acuteness or reach of judgment. In the succeeding rational or intellectual period, his understanding, which formerly crept in a lower, mounts into a higher sphere, canvasses the natures, judges of the relations of things, forms schemes, deduces consequences from what is past, and from present as well as past collects future events. By this succession of states, and of correspondent culture, he grows up at length into a moral, social, and political creature. This is the last period, at which we perceive him to arrive in this his mortal career. Each period is introductory to the next succeeding one; each life is a field of exercise and improvement for the next higher one, the life of the fetus for that of the infant, the life of the infant for that of the child, and all the lower for the highest and best.—But is this the last period of nature's progression? Is this the utmost extent of her plot, where she winds up the drama, and dismisses the actor into eternal oblivion? Or does he appear to be invested with supernumerary powers, which have not full exercise and scope, even in the last scene, and reach not that maturity or perfection of which they are capable; and therefore point to some higher scene, where he is to sustain another and more important character than he has yet sustained? If any such there are, may we not conclude by analogy, or in the same way of anticipation as before, that he is destined for that afterpart, and is to be produced upon a more august and solemn stage, where his sublimer powers shall have proportioned action, and its nature attain its completion?

If we attend to that curiosity, or prodigious thirst of knowledge, which is natural to the mind in every period of its progress; and consider withal the endless round of bustle and care, and the various hardships to which the bulk of mankind are chained down; it is evident, that in this present state, it is impossible to expect the gratification of an appetite at once so insatiable and so noble. Our senses, the ordinary organs by which knowledge is let into the mind, are always imperfect, and often fallacious; the advantages of assailing, or correcting them, are possessed by few; the difficulties of finding out truth amidst the various and contradictory opinions, interests, and passions of mankind, are many; and the wants of the creature, and of those with whom he is connected, numerous and urgent; so that it may be said of most men, that their intellectual organs are as much shut up and secluded from proper nourishment and exercise in that little circle to which they are confined, as the bodily organs are in the womb. Nay, those who to an aspiring genius have added all the assistances of art, leisure, and the most liberal education, what narrow prospects can even they take of this unbounded scene of things from that little eminence on which they stand? And how eagerly do they still grasp at new discoveries, without any satisfaction or limit to their ambition?

But should it be said, that man is made for action, and not for speculation, or fruitless searches after knowledge; we ask, For what kind of action? Is it only for bodily exercises; or for moral, political, and religious ones? Of all these he is capable; yet, by the unavoidable circumstances of his lot, he is tied down to the former; and has hardly any leisure to think of the latter; or, if he has, wants the proper instruments of exerting them. The love of virtue, of one's friends and country, the generous sympathy with mankind, and heroic zeal of doing good, which are all so natural to great and good minds, and some traces of which are found in the lowest, are seldom united with proportioned means or opportunities of exercising them; so that the moral spring, the noble energies and impulses of the mind, can hardly find proper scope, even in the most fortunate condition; but are much depressed in some, and almost entirely restrained in the generality, by the numerous clogs of an indigent, sickly, or embarrassed life. Were such mighty powers, such Godlike affections planted in the human breast, to be folded up in the narrow womb of our present existence, never to be produced into a more perfect life, nor to expatiate in the ample career of immortality?

Let it be considered, at the same time, that no possession, no enjoyment within the round of mortal things, is commensurate to the desires, or adequate to the capacities of the mind. The most envied condition has its abatements; the happiest conjunction of fortune leaves many wishes behind; and after the highest gratifications, the mind is carried forward in pursuit of new ones without end. Add to all, the fond desire of immortality, the secret dread of non-existence, and the high unremitting pulse of the soul beating for perfection, joined to the improbability or the impossibility of attaining it here; and then judge whether this elaborate structure, this magnificent apparatus of inward powers and organs, does not plainly point out an hereafter, and intimate eternity to man? Does nature give the finishing touches to the lesser and ignobler instances of her skill, and raise every other creature to the maturity and perfection of his being; and shall she leave her principal workmanship unfinished? Does she carry the vegetative and animal life in man to their full vigour, and highest destination; and shall she suffer his intellectual, his moral, his divine life to fade away, and be for ever extinguished? Would such abortions in the moral world be congruous to that perfection of wisdom and goodness which upholds and adorns the natural?

We must therefore conclude, from this detail, that the present state, even at its best, is only the womb of man's being, in which the noblest principles of his nature are in a manner fettered or secluded from a correspondent sphere of action; and therefore destined for a future and unbounded state, where they shall emancipate themselves, and exert the fulness of their strength. The most accomplished mortal, in this low and dark appartment of nature, is only the rudiments of what he shall be, when he takes his ethereal flight, and puts on immortality. Without a reference to that state, man were a mere abortion, a rude unfinished embryo, a monster in nature. But this being once suppos'd, he still maintains his rank, of the master piece of the creation; his latent powers are all suitable to the harmony and progression of nature; his noble aspirations, and the pains of his dissolution, are his efforts towards a second birth, the pangs of his delivery into light, liberty, and perfection; and death his discharge from gaol, his separation from his fellow-prisoners, and introduction into the assembly of those heroic spirits who are gone before him, and of their great eternal Parent. The fetters of his mortal coil being loosed, and his prison-walls broke down, he will be bare and open on every side to the admission of truth and virtue, and their fair attendant happiness; every vital and intellectual spring will evolve itself, with a divine elasticity, in the free air of heaven. He will not then peep at the universe and its glorious Author through a dark grate, or a gross medium, nor receive the reflections of his glory through the strait openings of sensible organs; but will be all eye, all ear, all etherial and divine feeling.—Let one part, however, of the analogy be attended to; That, as in the womb we receive our original constitution, form, and the essential stamina of our being, which we carry along with us into the light, and which greatly affect the succeeding periods of our life; so our temper and condition in the future life will depend on the conduct we have observed, and the character we have formed in the present life. We are here in miniature what we shall be at full length hereafter. The first rude sketch, or out-lines of reason and virtue, must be drawn at present, to be afterwards enlarged to the stature and beauty of angels.

This, if duly attended to, must prove not only a guard, but an admirable incentive to virtue. For he who faithfully and ardently follows the light of knowledge, and pants after higher improvements in virtue, will be wonderfully animated and inflamed in that pursuit, by a full conviction that the scene does not close with life;—that his struggles arising from the weakness of nature, and the strength of habit, will be turned into triumphs;—that his career in the tracts of wisdom and goodness will be both swifter and smoother;—and those generous ardors with which he glows towards heaven, i.e., the perfection and immortality of virtue, will find their adequate object and exercise in a sphere proportionably enlarged, incorruptible, immortal. On the other hand, what an inexplicable damp must it be to the good man, to dread the total extinction of that light and virtue, without which life, nay immortality itself, were not worth a single wish?

Many writers draw their proofs of the immortality of the soul, and of a future state of rewards and punishments, from the unequal distribution of these here. It cannot be diffused that wicked men often escape the outward punishment due to their crimes, and do not feel the inward in that measure their demerit seems to require, partly from the callousness induced upon their nature by the habits of vice, and partly from the dissipation of their minds abroad by pleasure or business; and sometimes good men do not reap all the natural and genuine fruits of their virtue, through the many unforeseen or unavoidable calamities in which they are involved. This, no doubt, upon the supposition of an all-wise and good Providence, were an argument, and a strong one too, for a future state, in which those inequalities shall be corrected. But unless we suppose a prepotent good order in the present scene of things, we weaken the proof of the divine administration, and the presumption of better order in any future period of it.

Virtue has present rewards, and vice present punishments, annexed to it; such rewards and punishments as make virtue, in most cases that happen, far more eligible than vice: but, in the infinite variety of human contingencies, it may sometimes fall out, that the inflexible practice of virtue shall deprive a man of considerable advantages to himself, his family, or friends, which he might gain by a well-timed piece of roguery, suppose by betraying his trust, voting against his conscience, selling his country, or any other crime where the security against discovery shall heighten the temptation. Or, it may happen, that a strict adherence to his honour, to his religion, to the cause of liberty and virtue, shall expose him, or his family, to the loss of every thing, nay to poverty, slavery, death itself, or to torments far more intolerable. Now, what shall secure a man's virtue in circumstances of such trial? What shall enforce the obligations of conscience against the allurements of so many interests, the dread of so many and so terrible evils, and the almost unsurmountable aversion of human nature to excessive pain? The conflict is the greater, when the circumstances of the crime are such as easily admit a variety of alleviations from necessity, natural affection, love to one's family, or friends, perhaps in indigence: These will give it even the air of virtue. Add to all, that the crime may be thought to have few bad consequences,—may be easily concealed,—or imagined possible to be retrieved in a good measure by future good conduct. It is obvious to which side most men will lean in such a case, and how much need there is of a balance in the opposite scale, from the consideration of a God, of a providence, and of an immortal state of retribution, to keep the mind firm and uncorrupt in those or like instances of singular trial or distress.

But without supposing such peculiar instances, a sense of a Governing Mind, and a persuasion that virtue is not only befriended by him here, but will be crowned by him hereafter with rewards suitable to its nature, vast in themselves, and immortal in their duration, must be not only a mighty support and incentive to the practice of virtue, but a strong barrier against vice. The thoughts of an almighty Judge, and of an impartial future reckoning, are often alarming, inexpressibly so, even to the stoutest offenders. On the other hand, how supporting must it be to the good man, to think that he acts under the eye of his Friend, as well as Judge! How improving, to consider the present state as connected with a future one, and every relation in which he stands as a school of discipline for his affections, every trial as the exercise of some virtue, and the virtuous deeds which result from both as introductory to higher scenes of action and enjoyment! Finally, how transporting transporting is it to view death as his discharge from the warfare of mortality, and a triumphant entry into a state of freedom, security, and perfection; in which knowledge and wisdom shall break upon him from every quarter; where each faculty shall have its proper object; and his virtue, which was often damped or defeated here, shall be enthroned in undisturbed and eternal empire!

On reviewing this short system of morals, and the motives which support and enforce it, and comparing both with the Christian scheme, what light, and vigour do they borrow from thence! How clearly and fully does Christianity lay open the connections of our nature, both material and immaterial, and future as well as present! What an ample and beautiful detail does it present of the duties we owe to God, to society, and ourselves; promulgated in the most simple, intelligible, and popular manner; divested of every partiality of sect or nation; and adapted to the general state of mankind! With what bright and alluring examples does it illustrate and recommend the practice of those duties; and with what mighty sanctions does it infuse that practice! How strongly does it describe the corruptions of our nature; the deviations of our life, from the rule of duty; and the causes of both! How marvellous and benevolent a plan of redemption does it unfold, by which those corruptions may be remedied, and our nature restored from its deviations, to transcendent heights of virtue and piety! Finally, what a fair and comprehensive prospect does it give us of the administration of God, of which it represents the present state only as a small period; and a period of warfare and trial! How solemn and unbounded are the scenes which it opens beyond it; the resurrection of the dead; the general judgment; the equal distribution of rewards and punishments to the good and the bad; and the full completion of divine wisdom and goodness in the final establishment of order, perfection, and happiness!—How glorious then is that scheme of religion, and how worthy of affection as well as of admiration, which, by making such discoveries, and affording such assistances, has disclosed the unfading fruits and triumphs of virtue, and secured its interests beyond the power of time and chance!