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good and evil, honest and dishonest, are originally founded in the laws and constitutions of the sovereign civil power, enjoining some things or actions, and prohibiting others. So that when any thing is found conducing to the welfare of the public, and thereupon comes to be enacted by governors into a law, it is forthwith thereby rendered morally good and honest; and, on the contrary, evil and dishonest, when, upon its contrariety to the public welfare, it stands prohibited and condemned by the same public authority.

This was the opinion heretofore of Epicurus, as it is represented by Gassendus; who understood his notions too well to misrepresent them. And lately of one amongst ourselves, a less philosopher, though the greater heathen of the two, the infamous author of the Leviathan. And the like lewd, scandalous, and immoral doctrine, or worse, if possible, may be found in some writers, of another kind of note and character; whom, one would have thought, not only religion, but shame of the world, might have taught better things.

Such as, for instance, Bellarmine himself; who, in his 4th book and 5th chapter De Pontifice Romano, has this monstrous passage: "That if the

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pope should through error or mistake command "vices, and prohibit virtues, the church would be "bound in conscience to believe vice to be good, " and virtue evil." I shall give you the whole passage in his own words to a tittle: "Fides catholica "docet omnem virtutem esse bonam, omne vitium "esse malum. Si autem erraret papa, præcipiendo "vitia vel prohibendo virtutes, teneretur ecclesia "credere vitia esse bona et virtutes malas, nisi vellet

"contra conscientiam peccare." Good God! that any thing that wears the name of a Christian, or but of a man, should venture to own such a villainous, impudent, and blasphemous assertion in the face of the world, as this! What! must murder, adultery, theft, fraud, extortion, perjury, drunkenness, rebellion, and the like, pass for good and commendable actions, and fit to be practised? And mercy, chastity, justice, truth, temperance, loyalty, and sincere dealing, be accounted things utterly evil, immoral, and not to be followed by men, in case the pope, who is generally weak, and almost always a wicked man, should, by his mistake and infallible ignorance, command the former, and forbid the latter? Did Christ himself ever assume such a power as to alter the morality of actions, and to transform vice into virtue, and virtue into vice, by his bare word? Certainly never did a grosser paradox, or a wickeder sentence, drop from the mouth or pen of any mortal man, since reason or religion had any being in the world.

And, I must confess, I have often with great amazement wondered how it could possibly come from a person of so great a reputation, both for learning and virtue too, as the world allows Bellarmine to have been. But when men give themselves over to the defence of wicked interests and false propositions, it is just with God to smite the greatest abilities with the greatest infatuations.

But as for these two positions or assertions; That the moral good or evil, the honesty or dishonesty of human actions, should depend either upon the opinions or upon the laws of men; they are certainly false in themselves, because they are infinitely ab

surd in their consequences. Some of which are such as these.

As,

First, If the moral goodness or evil of men's actions were originally founded in, and so proceeded wholly from the opinions or laws of men, then it would follow, that they must change and vary according to the change and difference of the opinions and laws of men and consequently, that the same action, under exactly the same circumstances, may be morally good one day, and morally evil another; and morally good in one place, and morally evil in another: forasmuch as the same sovereign authority may enact or make a law, commanding such or such an action to-day, and a quite contrary law forbidding the same action to-morrow; and the very same action, under the same circumstances, may be commanded by law in one country, and prohibited by law in another. Which being so, the consequence is manifest, and the absurdity of the consequent intolerable.

Secondly, If the moral goodness or evil of men's actions depended originally upon human laws, then those laws themselves could neither be morally good nor evil: the consequence is evident; because those laws are not commanded or prohibited by any antecedent human laws; and consequently, if the moral goodness or evil of any act were to be derived only from a precedent human law, laws themselves, not supposing a dependance upon other precedent human laws, could have no moral goodness or evil in them. Which to assert of any human act (such as all human laws essentially are and must be) is certainly a very gross absurdity.

Thirdly, If the moral goodness or evil of men's actions were sufficiently derived from human laws or constitutions, then, upon supposal that a divine law should (as it often does) command what is prohibited by human laws, and prohibit what is commanded by them, it would follow, that either such commands and prohibitions of the divine law do not at all affect the actions of men in point of their morality, so as to render them either good or evil; or that the same action, at the same time, may, in respect of the divine law commanding it, be morally good; and, in respect of an human law forbidding it, be morally evil. Than which consequence, nothing can be more clear, nor withal more absurd.

And many more of the like nature I could easily draw forth, and lay before you. Every false principle or proposition being sure to be attended with a numerous train of absurdities.

But, as to the subject-matter now in hand; so far is the morality of human actions, as to the goodness or evil of them, from being founded in any human law, that in very many, and those the principal instances of human action, it is not originally founded in, or derived from, so much as any positive divine law. There being a jus naturale certainly antecedent to all jus positivum, either human or divine ; and that such as results from the very nature and being of things, as they stand in such a certain habitude or relation to one another: to which relation whatsoever is done agreeably is morally and essentially good; and whatsoever is done otherwise is, at the same rate, morally evil.

And this I shall exemplify in those two grand,

comprehensive, moral duties, which man is for ever obliged to, his duty towards God, and his duty towards his neighbour.

And first, for his duty towards God; which is, to love and obey him with all his heart and all his soul. It is certain, that for a rational, intelligent creature to conform himself to the will of God in all things, carries in it a moral rectitude, or goodness; and to disobey or oppose his will in any thing, imports a moral obliquity, before God ever deals forth any particular law or command to such a creature; there being a general obligation upon man to obey all God's laws, whensoever they shall be declared, before any particular instance of law comes actually to be declared. But now whence is this? Why, from that essential suitableness which obedience has to the relation which is between a rational creature and his Creator. Nothing in nature being more irrational and irregular, and consequently more immoral, than for an intelligent being to oppose or disobey that sovereign, supreme will, which gave him that being, and has withal the sole and absolute disposal of him in all his concerns. So that there needs no positive law or sanction of God to stamp an obliquity upon such a disobedience; since it cleaves to it essentially, and by way of natural result from it, upon the account of that utter unsuitableness which disobedience has to the relation which man naturally and necessarily stands in towards his Maker.

And then, in the next place, for his duty to his neighbour. The whole of which is comprised in that great rule, of doing as a man would be done by. We may truly affirm, that the morality of this

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