ciples were innate, and imprinted in our minds immediately by the hand of God. I grant the existence of God is so many ways manifest, and the obedience we owe him so congruous to the light of reason, that a great part of mankind give testimony to the law of nature; but yet I think it must be allowed, that several moral rules may receive from mankind a very general approbation, without either knowing or admitting the true ground of morality; which can only be the will and law of a God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hand rewards and punishments, and power enough to call to account the proudest offender. For God having, by an inseparable connexion, joined virtue and publick happiness together; and made the practice thereof necessary to the preservation of society, and visibly beneficial to all with whom the virtuous man has to do; it is no wonder, that every one should, not only allow, but recommend, and magnify those rules to others, from whose observance of them, he is sure to reap advantage to himself. He may, out of interest, as well as conviction, cry up that for sacred, which if once trampled on, and prophaned, he himself cannot be safe nor secure. This, though it takes nothing from the moral and eternal obligation which these rules evidently have; yet it shews that the outward acknowledgment men pay them in their words proves not that they are innate principles: nay, it

proves not so much, that men assent to them inwardly in their own minds, as the inviolable rules of their own practice; since we find that self-interest and the conveniences of this life make many men own an outward profession and approbation of them, whose actions sufficiently prove, that they very little consider the lawgiver that prescribed these rules, nor the hell he has ordered for the punishment of those that transgress them."

Conscience may be urged, as checking us for the breach of a moral rule, and so the internal obligation of it be preserved. I answer, that many men may assent to several moral rules, in the same way as they come to the knowledge of other things; according to their education, company, and the customs of their country; and the persuasion, however got, will serve to set Conscience on work; which is nothing else but our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions: and if this be a proof of innate principles, contrarieties may be such; since some men, with the same bent of conscience, prosecute what others avoid. At the sacking of a town, see what touch of conscience an army feels for all the outrages they do. Murders in duels, when fashion has made them honourable, are committed without remorse of conscience; and in many places, innocence in this case is the greatest ignominy.

If you say that the breaking of a rule is no argument that it is unknown; this I grant; but I say, the generally allowed breach of it any where is a proof that it is not innate. No practical principle can be innate, that is imprinted on the mind, as a duty, without supposing the Ideas of God, law, obligation, punishment, a future life, to be innate ; which they are so far from being, that it is not every studious and thinking man in whom they are to be found clear and distinct.

Principles of actions indeed there are lodged in men's appetites; but these are so far from being innate moral principles, that if they were left to their full swing, they would carry men to the over-turning of all morality. Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments, that will overbalance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the law. If therefore any thing be imprinted on the mind of all men as a law, all men must have a certain and unavoidable knowledge, that certain and unavoidable punishments will attend the breach of it. For if men can be ignorant or doubtful of what is innate, innate principles are insisted on, and urged to no purpose; truth and certainty (the things pretended) are not all secured by them but men are in the same uncertain, floating estate with, as without them. An evident indubi

table knowledge of unavoidable punishment, great enough to make the transgression very uneligible, must accompany an innate law; unless with an innate law, they can suppose an innate gospel too. I would not be here mistaken, as if, because I deny an innate law, I thought there were none but positive laws. There is a great deal of difference between an innate law, and a law of nature; between something imprinted on our minds in their very original, and something that we being ignorant of may attain to the knowledge of, by the use and due application of our natural faculties. And I think they equally forsake the truth, who running into the contrary extremes, either affirm an innate law, or deny that there is a law, knowable by the light of nature; that is, without the help of positive revelation."

It might be expected that those who talk so confidently of these Innate Principles, should tell us which they are but in truth, were there any such, there would be no need to teach them; and there could be no more doubt of their number than of the number of our fingers. 'Tis easy to foresee, that if men of different sects should go about to give us a list of these innate practical principles, they would set down only such as suited their distinct hypotheses, and were fit to support the doctrines of their particular schools or churches :-a plain evidence that there are no such innate truths. Nay, many men not on

ly deny these, but by denying freedom to mankind, and thereby making men no other than bare machines, take away all moral rules; unless we can conceive how any thing can be capable of a law, that is not a free agent: so that they who cannot reconcile morality and mechanism (which is not very easy) must reject all principles of virtue. (Lord Herbert's innate principles examined in Sections 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.)

"Nor will it be of much moment here to offer that very ready, but not very material answer, viz. That the Innate Principles of morality, may, by education and custom, and the general opinion of those amongst whom we converse, be darkened, and at ast quite worn out of the minds of men. Which assertion of theirs, if true, quite takes away the argument of universal consent, by which this opinion of innate principles is endeavoured to be proved: unless those men will think it reasonable, that their private persuasions, or that of their party, should pass for universal consent; a thing not unfrequently done, when men, presuming themselves to be the only masters of right reason, cast by the votes and opinions of the rest of mankind, as not worthy the reckoning. And then their argument stands thus: The principles which all mankind allow for true, are innate; those that men of right reason admit, are the principles allowed by all mankind;