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ture and the decifions of our fupreme courts of juftice, are not contained in fewer than fifty folio volumes; and yet it is not once in ten attempts that you can find the cafe you look for, in any law-book whatever; to fay nothing of thofe numerous points of conduct, concerning which the law profeffes not to prescribe or determine any thing. Had then the fame particularity, which obtains in human laws fo far as they go, been attempted in the Scriptures, throughout the whole extent of morality, it is manifeft, they would have been by much too bulky to be either read or circulated; or rather, as St. John fays, "even the world itself could

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not contain the books that should be written.' Morality is taught in Scripture in this wife. General rules are laid down of piety, justice, benevolence, and purity: fuch as worshipping God in spirit and in truth; doing as we would be done by; loving our neighbour as ourself; forgiving others, as we expect forgiveness from God; that mercy is better than facrifice; that not that which entereth into a man, (nor, by parity of reason, any ceremonial pollutions) but that which proceedeth from the heart, defileth him. These rules are occafionally illuftrated, either by fictitious examples, as in the parable of the

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good Samaritan; and of the cruel fervant, who refused to his fellow-fervant that indulgence and compaffion which his master had shewn to him: or in inftances which actually presented themselves, as in Chrift's reproof of his disciples at the Samaritan village; his praife of the poor widow, who caft in her laft mite; his cenfure of the Pharifees, who chose out the chief rooms-and of the tradition, whereby they evaded the command to sustain their indigent parents: or laftly, in the refolution of questions, which those who were about our Saviour propofed to him; as in his answer to the young man who asked him, “ What lack I yet;" and to the honest scribe, who had found out, even in that age and country, that "to love God and his neighbour was more than "all whole burnt offerings and facrifice."

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And this is in truth the way in which all tical sciences are taught, as Arithmetic, Grammar, Navigation, and the like.-Rules are laid down, and examples are fubjoined; not that these examples are the cafes, much less all the cafes which will actually occur, but by way only of explaining the principle of the rule, and as so many fpecimens of the method of applying it. The chief difference is, that the examples in Scripture are not annexed to the rules with the di

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dactic regularity to which we are now-a-days accustomed, but delivered dispersedly, as particular occafions fuggefted them; which gave them however, especially to those who heard them, and were present to the occafions which produced them, an energy and perfuafion, much beyond what the fame or any inftances would. have appeared with, in their places in a system.

Befide this, the Scriptures commonly prefuppose, in the persons to whom they speak, a knowledge of the principles of natural justice; and are employed not fo much to teach new rules of morality, as to enforce the practice of it by new fanctions, and by a greater certainty: which laft feems to be the proper business of a revelation from God, and what was moft wanted.

Thus the "unjuft, covenant breakers and extortioners" are condemned in Scripture, fuppofing it known, or leaving it, where it admits of doubt, to moralifts to determine, what injuftice, extor, tion, or breach of covenant are,

The above confiderations are intended to prove that the Scriptures do not fuperfede the use of the fcience of which we profefs to treat, and at the fame time to acquit them of any charge of im, perfection or infufficiency on that account,

СНАР,

CHAP. V.

THE MORAL SENSE.

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HE father of Caius Toranius had been profcribed by the triumvirate. Caius "Toranius, coming over to the interests of that

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party, discovered to the officers, who were in "pursuit of his father's life, the place where he "concealed himself, and gave them withal a de

fcription, by which they might distinguish "his person, when they found him. The old man, more anxious for the safety and for

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tunes of his fon, than about the little that "might remain of his own life, began imme"diately to inquire of the officers who seized "him, whether his fon was well, whether he "had done his duty to the fatisfaction of his

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generals. That fon, replied one of the of"ficers, fo dear to thy affections, betrayed thee

to us; by his information thou art appre"hended, and dieft. The officer with this "ftruck a poniard to his heart, and the un"happy parent fell, not fo much affected by

"his fate, as by the means to which he owed "it."*

Now the question is, whether, if this story were related to the wild boy, caught fome years ago in the woods of Hanover, or to a favage, without experience and without instruction, cut off in his infancy from all intercourse with his fpecies, and, confequently, under no poffible influence of example, authority, education, fympathy, or habit; whether, I fay, fuch a one would feel, upon the relation, any degree of that fentiment of difapprobation of Toranius's conduct which we feel, or not.

They who maintain the existence of a moral fense of innate maxims-of a natural confcience-that the love of virtue and hatred of vice are instinctive—or the perception of right and wrong intuitive, (all which are only different

* "Caius Toranius triumvirum partes fecutus, profcripti "patris fui prætorii et ornati viri latebras, ætatem, notafque "corporis, quibus agnofci poffet, centurionibus edidit, qui "eum perfecuti funt. Senex de filii magis vita, et incremen"tis, quam de reliquo fpiritu fuo follicitus; an incolumis "effet, et an imperatoribus fatisfaceret, interrogare eos cœpit. "E quibus unus: ab illo, inquit, quem tantopere diligis, de"monftratus, noftro minifterio, filii indicio occideris pro"tinufque pectus ejus gladio trajecit. Collapfus itaque est "infelix, auctore cædis, quam ipfa cæde, miferior."

VALER. MAX. Lib. IX. Cap. 11.

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