CHAPTER IV.

THE SCRIPTURES.

WHOEVER expects to find in the Scriptures a specific direction for every moral doubt that arises, looks for more than he will meet with. And to what a magnitude such a detail of particular precepts would have enlarged the sacred volume, may be partly understood from the following consideration. The laws of this country, including the acts of the legislature and the decisions of our supreme courts of justice, are not contained in fewer than fifty folio volumes; and yet it is not once in ten attempts that you can find the case you look for, in any law-book whatever; to say nothing of those numerous points of conduct, concerning which the law professes not to prescribe or determine any thing. Had then the same particularity, which obtains in human laws so far as they go, been attempted in the Scriptures, throughout the whole extent of morality, it is manifest, they would have been by much too bulky to be either read or circulated; or rather, as St. John says, " even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."

Morality is taught in Scripture in this wise. General rules are laid down of piety, justice, benevolence, and purity: such 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 sacrifice; that not that which entereth to a man (nor, by parity of reason, any ceremoniollutions) but that which proceedeth from the defileth him. These rules are occasionally ild, either by fictitious examples, as in the parahe good Samaritan; and of the cruel serrefused to his fellow-servant that indul,

gence and compassion which his master had shewn to him: or in instances which actually presented themselves, as in Christ's reproof of his disciples at the Samaritan village; his praise of the poor widow, who cast in her last mite; his censure of the Pharisees who chose out the chief rooms-and of the tradition, whereby they evaded the command to sustain their indigent parents; or lastly, in the resolution of questions, which those who were about our Saviour proposed 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 sacrifice."

And this is in truth the way in which all practical sciences are taught, as Arithmetic, Grammar, Navigation, and the like. Rules are laid down, and examples are subjoined; not that these examples are the cases, much less all the cases which will actually occur, but by way only of explaining the principle of the rule, and as so many specimens of the method of applying it. The chief difference is, that the examples in Scripture are not annexed to the rules with the didactic regularity to which we are now-a-days accustomed, but delivered dispersedly, as particular occasions suggested them; which gave them, however, especially to those who heard them, and were present to the occasions which produced them, an energy and persuasion, much beyond what the same or any instances would have appeared with, in their places in a system.

Beside this, the Scriptures commonly presuppose, in the persons to whom they speak, a knowledge of the principles of natural justice; and are employed not so much to teach new rules of morality, as to enforce the practice of it by new sanctions, and by a greater certainty: which last seems to be the proper business of a revelation from God, and what was most wanted,

Thus the "unjust, covenant breakers, and extor tioners," are condemned in Scripture, fupposing it known, or leaving it, where it admits of doubt, to moralists to determine, what injustice, extortion, or breach of covenant, is.

The above considerations are intended to prove that the Scriptures do not supersede the use of the science of which we profess to treat, and at the same time to acquit them of any charge of imperfection or insufficiency on that account,

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CHAPTER V.

THE MORAL SENSE.

THE father of Caius Toranius had been pro, scribed by the triumvirate. Caius Toranius, coming over to the interests of that 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 description, by which they might distinguish his person when they found him. The old man, more anxious for the safety and fortunes of his son, than about the little that might remain of his own life, began immediately to inquire of the officers who seized him, whether his son was well, whether he had done his duty to the satisfaction of his generals. That son, replied one of the officers, so dear to thy affections, betrayed thee to us; by his information thou art apprehended, and diest. The officer with this struck a poniard to his heart, and the unhappy parent fell, not so much affected by his fate, as by the means to which he owed it."

*«Caius Toranius triumvirum partes secutus, proscripti patris uti prætorii et ornati viri latebras, ætatem notasque corporis, quibus agnosci posset, centurionibus edidit, qui eum persecuti sunt. Senex de filii magis vita, et incrementis, quam de reliquo spiritu suo sollicitus; an incolumis esset, et an imperatoribus satisfaceret, interrogare cos cœpit. Equibus unus: ab illo, inquiï, quem tantopere diligis, demonstratus, nostro ministreio, filii indicio occideris;

Now the question is, whether, if this story were related to the wild boy, caught some years ago in the woods of Hanover, or to a savage without experience, and without instruction, cut off in his infancy from all intercourse with his species, and consequently, under no possible influence of example, authority, education, sympathy, or habit; whether, I say, such a one would feel, upon the relation, any degree of that sentiment of disapprobation of Toranius' conduct which we feel, or not.

They who maintain the existence of a moral sense -of innate maxims-of a natural conscience-that the love of virtue and hatred of vice are instinctive -or the perception of right and wrong intuitive (all which are only different ways of expressing the same opinion) affirm that he would.

They who deny the existence of a moral sense, &c. affirm that he would not.

And, upon this, issue is joined.

As the experiment has never been made, and from the difficulty of procuring a subject (not to mention the impossibility of proposing the question to him, if we had one) is never likely to be made, what would be the event, can only be judged of from probable

reasons.

Those who contend for the affirmative, observe, that we approve examples of generosity, gratitude, fidelity, &c. and condemn the contrary, instantly, without deliberation, without having any interest of our own concerned in them; ofttimes without being conscious of, or able to give, any reason for our approbation; that this approbation is uniform and universal; the same sorts of conduct being approved or disapproved in all ages and countries of the worldcircumstances, say they, which strongly indicate the operation of an instinct or moral sense.

protinufque pectus ejus gladio trajecit. Seadis, quam ipfa cæde, miserior.""

Collapfus itaque est infelix, auctore,

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

On the other hand, answers have been given to most of these arguments, by the patrons of the opposite system and,

First, as to the uniformity above alleged, they controvert the fact. They remark, from authentic accounts of historians and travellers, that there is scarcely a single vice, which in some age or country of the world has not been countenanced by public opinion; that in one country it is esteemed an office of piety in children to sustain their aged parents, in another to dispatch them out of the way; that suicide in one age of the world, has been heroism, in another felony; that theft, which is punished by most laws, by the laws of Sparta was not unfrequently rewarded; that the promiscuous commerce of the sexes, although condemned by the regulations and censure of all civilized nations, is practised by the savages of the tropical regions, without reserve, compunction, or disgrace; that crimes, of which it is no longer permitted us even to speak, have had their advocates among the sages of very renowned times; that, if an inhabitant of the polished nations of Europe is delighted with the appearance, wherever he meets with it, of happiness, tranquillity, and comfort, a wild American is no less diverted with the writhings and contortions of a victim at the stake; that even amongst ourselves, and in the present improved state of moral knowledge, we are far from a perfect consent in our opinions or feelings; that you shall hear duelling alternately reprobated and applauded, according to the sex, age, or station of the person you converse with; that the forgiveness of injuries and insults is accounted by one sort of people magnanimity, by another, meanness; that in the above instances, and perhaps in most others, moral approbation follows the fashions and institutions of the country we live in; which fashions also, and institutions themselves, have grown out of the exigences, the climate, situation, or local circumstances of the country; or