Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/737

BISHOP.] CUMBERLAND 701 To the duties of his new etation he applied himself with great assiduity. His charges to the clergy are described as plain and unambitious, the earnest breathings of a pious mind. His old age was fresh and vigorous, nor did he dis continue his episcopal visitations till after he attained his eightieth year. When Dr Wilkins published the New Testa ment in Coptic, he presented a copy to the bishop, who began to study the language after he had completed the age of eighty-three. " At this age," says his chaplain, " he mastered the language, and went through great part of this version, and would often give me excellent hints and re marks, as he proceeded in reading of it." He died in 1718, in the eighty-seventh year of his age : he was found sitting in his library, in the attitude of one asleep, and with a book in his hand. The great-grandson of Bishop Cumber land was Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, the subject of the following notice. Bishop Cumberland was eminently distinguished by his gentleness and humility. He was of a temper so cool and sedate that it could not be roused to anger, and through the whole course of his life his soul is represented as having been in a constant state of calmness and serenity, hardly ever ruffled by any passion. The theory which he main tains in his principal work is founded on benevolence, and it naturally flowed from the habitual temperament of the author s mind. He was a man of a sound understanding, improved by extensive learning, and has left behind him several monuments of his talents and industry. The care of Cumberland s posthumous publications devolved upon his domestic chaplain Payne, who soon after the bishop s death edited " Sanchoniatho s Phoenician History, translated from the first book of Eusebius, De Prceparatione Evangelica : with a continuation of Sanchoniatho s history by Eratosthenes Cyrenaeus s Canon, which Dicsearchtis connects with the first Olympiad. These authors are illustrated with many historical and chronological remarks, proving them to contain a series of Phoenician and Egyptian chronology, from the first man to the first Olympiad, agreeable to the Scripture accounts," Lond. 1720. The preface contains an account of the life, character, and writings of the author, which was likewise published in a separate form, and exhibits a pleasing picture of his happy old age. A German trans lation appeared under the title of Cumberland s Ph6nizische Historic des Sanchoniathons, ubersetzt von Joh. Phil. Cassel, Magdeburg, 1755, 8vo. The sequel to the work was likewise published by Payne, Origines Gentium antiquissimoc ; or Attempts for discovering the Times of the first Planting of Nations : in several Tracts, Loud. 1724, 8vo. [The philosophy of Cumberland is expounded in the treatise De Legibus Naturce. The merits of the work are almost confined to the general character and substance of the speculation it contains, for its style is destitute of both strength and grace, and its reasoning is diffuse and immethodical to a trying degree. Its main design is to eombat the principles which Hobbes had promulgated as to the constitution of man, the nature of morality, and the origin of society, and to prove, in opposition to what he had maintained, that self-advantage is not the chief end of man, that force is not the source of personal obligation to moral conduct nor the foundation of social rights, and that the state of nature is not a state of war. The views of Hobbes seem to Cumberland utterly subversive of religion, morality, and civil society, and he endeavours, as a rule, to establish directly antagonistic propositions, He refrains, however, from denunciation ; he uses only calm and moderate language, and is a uniformly fair opponent up to the measure of his insight. Laws of nature are defined by him as " immutably true propositions regulative of voluntary actions as to the choice of good and the avoidance of evil, and which carry with them an obligation to outward acts of obedience, even apart from civil laws and from any c msiderations of com pacts constituting governments." TLis definition he says will be admitted by all parties. Some deny that there are any such laws, but they will grant as readily as their opponents that this is what ought to be understood by them. There is thus common ground for the two opposing schools of moralists to join issue. The question between them is, Do such laws exist or do they not ? In reasoning thus Cumberland obviously forgot what the position main tained by his principal antagonist really was. Hobbes must have refused to accept the definition proposed. He did not deny that there were laws of nature, laws antecedent to government, laws even in a sense eternal and immutable. The virtues as means to happiness seemed to him to be such laws. They precede civil constitution, which merely perfects the obligation to practise them. He expressly denied, however, that " they carry with them an obligation to outward acts of obedience, even apart from civil laws and from any consideration of compacts constituting govern ments." And many besides Hobbes must have felt dis satisfied with the definition. It is the reverse of unambigu ous or luminous. In what sense is a law of nature a " proposition ? " Is it as the expression of a constant rela tion among facts, or is it as the expression of a divine com mandment ] A proposition is never in itself an ultimate fact although it may be the statement of such a fact. And in what sense is a law of nature an " immutably true " proposition ? Is it one which men always and everywhere accept and act on, or merely one which they always and everywhere ought to accept and act on ] The definition, in fact, raises various doubts and difficulties, and can scarcely be said to clear away any. The existence of such laws as are defined may, according to Cumberland, be established in two ways. The inquirer may start either from effects or causes. The former method had been taken by Grotius, Sharrock, and Selden. They had sought to prove that there were universal truths, entitled to be called laws of nature, from the concurrence of the testimonies of many men, peoples, and ages regarding them, through collecting the opinions of persons widely removed in space and time from one another, and through generalizing the operations of certain active principles. Cumberland admits this method to be valid, but he prefers the other, that from causes to effects, as showing more con vincingly that the laws of nature carry with them a divine obligation. It not only establishes laws of nature as uni versal, but as having been meant to be ; it shows that man has been constituted as he is in order that they might be. In the prosecution of this method he expressly declines to have recourse to what he calls " the short and easy expedient of the Platonists," the assumption of innate ideas of the laws of nature. He has not, he says, been so happy as to learn the laws of nature by so simple a way. He thinks it ill-advised to build the doctrine of natural religion and morality on an hypothesis which many philosophers, both Gentile and Christian, had rejected, and which could not be proved against Epicureans, the principal impugners of the existence of laws of nature. He cannot assume, he says, without proof that such ideas existed from eternity in the divine mind, but must start from what sense and ex perience furnish, and thence by search into the nature of things discover what their laws are. It is only through nature that we can rise to nature s God. His attributes are not to be known by direct intuition. He did not think, then, that the ground taken up by More, Cudworth, and the other members of the Cambridge Platonic school was such as they could hold against an adversary like Hobbes or from which they could successfully assail him. His sympathies, however, were all on their side. He wished success to their efforts, and he would do nothing to diminish their chances of success. He would not even oppose the doctrine of innate ideas, because it looked with

a friendly eye upon piety and morality. He granted that