your reader with on this new point, nor any one have reason to suspect, that I have passed by any word of your lordship's, (on this now first introduced subject) wherein he might find your lordship had proved what you had promised in your title-page. Your remaining words are these; *The dispute is not how far personal identity in itself may consist in the very same material substance; for we allow the notion of personal iden. tity to belong to the same man under several changes of matter; but whether it doth not depend upon a vital union between the soul and body, and the life, which is consequent upon it; and therefore in the resurrection, the same material substance must be re-united, or else it cannot be called a resurrection, but a renovation, i. e. it may be a new life, but not a raising the body from the dead.' I confess, I do not see how what is here ushered in by the words and therefore,' is a consequence from the preceding words: but as to the propriety of the name, I think it will not be much questioned, that if the same man rise who was dead, it may very properly be called the resurrection of the dead; which is the language of the scripture.

I must not part with this article of the resurrection, without returning my thanks to your lordship for making me † take notice of a fault in my Essay. When I wrote that book, I took it for granted, as I doubt not but many others have done, that the scripture had mentioned, in express terms, the resurrection of the body.' But upon the occasion your lord. ship has given me in your last letter, to look a little more narrowly into what revelation has declared concerning the resurrection, and finding no such express words in the scripture, as that the body shall rise or be raised, or the resurrection of the body;' I shall in the next edition of it, change these words of my book, The dead bodies of men shall rise, into these of the scripture, 'the dead shall rise.' Not that I question, that the dead shall be raised with bodies; but in matters of revelation, I think it not only safest, but our duty, as far as any one delivers it for revelation, to keep close to the words of the scripture, unless he will assume to himself the authority of one inspired, or make himself wiser than the Holy Spirit himself. If I had spoke of the resurrection in precisely scripture terms, I had avoided giving your lordship the occasion of making here such a verbal reflection on my words; What! not if there be an idea of identity as to the body?'

* 2d Ans. || 2d Ans.

+ Ibid.

Essay, B. 4. C. 18. §. 7.

CHA P. XXVIII.

Of other Relations.

§. 1. BESIDES the before-mentioned

of time, place, and

Proportional,

causality, of comparing, or referring things one to ano

ther,

ther, there are, as I have said, infinite others, some whereof I shall mention.

First, The first I shall name is some one simple idea; which being capable of parts or degrees, affords an occasion of comparing the subjects wherein it is to one another, in respect to that simple idea, v. g. whiter, sweeter, equal, more, &c. These relations depending on the equality and excess of the same simple idea, in several subjects, may be called, if one will, proportional; and that these are only conversant about those simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, is so evident, that nothing need be said to evince it. :

Natural. §. 2. Secondly, Another occasion of comparing things together, or considering one thing, so as to include in that consideration some other thing, is the circumstances of their origin or beginning; which being not afterwards to be altered, make the relations depending thereon as lasting as the subjects to which they belong; v. g. father and son, brothers, cousin-germans, &c. which have their relations by one community of blood, wherein they partake in several degrees: countrymen, i. e. those who were born in the same country, or tract of ground; and these I call natural relations: wherein we may observe, that mankind have fitted their notions and words to the use of common life, and not to the truth and extent of things. For it is certain, that in reality the relation is the same betwixt the begetter and the begotten, in the several races of other animals as well as men: but yet it is seldom said, this bull is the grandfather of such a calf; or that two pigeons are cousin-germans. It is very convenient, that by distinct names these relations should be observed, and marked out in mankind; "there being occasion, both in laws, and other communications one with another, to mention and take notice of men under these relations: from whence also arise the obligations of several duties amongst men. Whereas in brutes, men having very little or no cause to mind these relations, they have not thought fit to give them distinct and peculiar names. This, by the way, may give us some light into the different state and growth

of

of languages; which, being suited only to the convenience of communication, are proportioned to the notions men have, and the commerce of thoughts familiar amongst them; and not to the reality or extent of things, nor to the various respects might be found among them, nor the different abstract considerations might be framed about them. Where they had no philosophical notions, there they had no terms to express them and it is no wonder men should have framed no names for those things they found no occasion to discourse of. From whence it is easy to imagine, why, as in some countries, they may have not so much as the name for a horse; and in others, where they are more careful of the pedigrees of their horses, than of their own, that there they may have not only names for particular horses, but also of their several relations of kindred one to another.

§. 3. Thirdly, Sometimes the founda- Instituted. tion of considering things, with reference

to one another, is some act whereby any one comes by a moral right, power, or obligation to do something. Thus a general is one that hath power to command an army; and an army under a general is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. A citizen, or a burgher, is one who has a right to certain privileges in this or that place. All this sort depending upon men's wills, or agreement in society, I call instituted, or voluntary: and may be distinguished from the natural, in that they are most, if not all of them, some way or other alterable, and separable from the persons to whom they have sometimes belonged, though neither of the substances, so related, be destroyed. Now though these are all reciprocal, as well as the rest, and contain in them a reference of two things one to the other; yet, because one of the two things often wants a relative name, importing that reference, men usually take no notice of it, and the relation is commonly overlooked: v. g. a patron and client are easily allowed to be relations, but a constable or dictator are not so readily, at first hearing, considered as such; because there is no peculiar name for those who are under the VOL. I.

Bb

сом

command of a dictator, or constable, expressing a relation to either of them: though it be certain, that either of them hath a certain power over some others; and so is so far related to them, as well as a patron is to his client, or general to his army.

Moral.

§. 4. Fourthly, There is another sort of relation, which is the conformity, or disagreement, men's voluntary actions have to a rule to which they are referred, and by which they are judged of; which, I think, may be called moral relation, as being that which denominates our moral actions, and deserves well to be examined; there being no part of knowledge wherein we should be more careful to get determined ideas, and avoid, as much as may be, obscurity and confusion. Human actions, when with their various ends, objects, manners, and circumstances, they are framed into distinct complex ideas, are, as has been shown, so many mixed modes, a great part whereof have names annexed to them. Thus, supposing gratitude to be a readiness to acknowledge and return kindness received, polygamy to be the having more wives than one at once; when we frame these notions thus in our minds, we have there so many determined ideas of mixed modes. But this is not all that concerns our actions; it is not enough to have determined ideas of them, and to know what names belong to such and such combinations of ideas. We have a farther and greater concernment, and that is, to know whether such actions so made up are morally good or bad.

and evil.

§. 5. Good and evil, as hath been shown, Moral good b. ii. chap. 20. §. 2. and chap. 21. §. 4 are nothing but pleasure or pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us. Moral good and evil then is only the conformity of disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law whereby good or evil is drawn on us by the will and power of the law-maker; which good and evil, plea sure or pain, attending our observance, or breach of the law, by the decree of the law-maker, is that we call reward and punishment.

§. 6. Of these moral rules, or laws, to Moral rules. which men generally refer, and by which

they judge of the rectitude or pravity of their actions, there seem to me to be three sorts, with their three different enforcements, or rewards and punishments. For since it would be utterly in vain to suppose a rule set to the free actions of men, without annexing to it some enforcement of good and evil to determine his will, we must, wherever we suppose a law, suppose also some reward or punishment annexed to that law. It would be in vain for one intelligent being to set a rule to the actions of another, if he had it not in his power to reward the compliance with, and punish deviation from his rule, by some good and evil, that is not the natural product and consequence of the action itself. For that being a natural convenience, or inconvenience, would operate of itself without a law. This, if I mistake not, is the true nature of all law, properly so called.

§. 7. The laws that men generally refer their actions to, to judge of their recti

Laws.

tude or obliquity, seem to me to be these three.

1.

The divine law. 2. The civil law. 3. The law of opinion or reputation, if I may so call it. By the relation they bear to the first of these, men judge whether their actions are sins or duties; by the second, whether they be criminal or innocent; and by the third, whether they be virtues or vices.

Divine law,

the measure of sin and

§. 8. First, the divine law, whereby I mean that law which God has set to the actions of men, whether promulgated to them by the light of nature, or the voice duty. of revelation. That God has given a rule whereby men should govern themselves, I think there is no-body so brutish as to deny. He has a right to do it, we are his creatures he has goodness and wisdom to direct our actions to that which is best; and he has power to enforce it by rewards and punishments, of infinite weight and duration in another life for no-body can take us out of his hands. This is the only true touchstone of moral rectitude; and by comparing them to Bb 2

this