miracles, and the accomplishment of prophecies; and the confirmation which the natural and civil history of the world gives to the Scripture account of things: these evi-
law written in their hearts. If, because "natural religion is liable to be mistaken, it is high time to have done with it in the pulpit;" how comes it that the same apostle refers the Philippians to the study of this religion, to whatsoever things are truey honest,just, lovely, and of good report? And yet, without such a study, our knowledge of the moral law must always remain imperfect; for a complete system of morality is certainly nowhere to be found in the Old or New Testament.* When a Christian minister is enforcing the duties or doctrines of revealed religion, he may perhaps do well to tell his people he has "no other proof of the original truth, obligations, present benefits, and future rewards of religion, to lay before them, than what is contained in the Scriptures." But what if his purpose be to inculcate some moral virtue? Will it not be useful here, besides observing that the practice of that virtue is enjoined by a divine command, to recommend it still farther to his hearers, by showing that it approves itself to our inward sense and perception, and accords with the native sentiments and suggestions of our minds? Metaphysicians may say what they will of our feelings of this sort, being all illusive, liable to be perverted by education and habit, and judged of by men's own sense of things: they, whose understandings are yet unspoiled by philosophy and vain deceit, will be little disposed to listen to such assertions. Nor are there wanting arguments which prove, and, as should seem, to the satisfaction of every reasonable inquirer, that the great and leading principles of moral duties have in all ages been the same; that such virtues as benevolence, justice, compassion, gratitude, accidental obstacles removed, and when the precise meaning of the words has been once explained, are instinctively known and approved by all men; and that our approbation of these is as much a part of our nature implanted in us by God, and as little liable to caprice and fashion, as the sense of seeing, given us also by him, by which all bodies appear to us in an erect, and not an inverted position.† Mr. Locke's authority has been generally looked up to as decisive on such questions; and his sentiments have been embraced implicitly, and without examination. That great and good man, however, is not to be charged with the pernicious consequences which others have drawn from his opinions; consequences which have been carried to such a length, as to destroy all moral difference of human actions; making virtue and vice altogether arbitrary; calling evil good, and good evil; putting darkness for light, and light for darkness; putting bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.
[* See the second of Dr. Balguy's Charges.][† See the third of Bishop Hurd's Sermons, vol. i.].
