A Treatise of the Laws of Nature. Richard Cumberland

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СКАЧАТЬ whom we ought to obey out of dutiful Affection to him, and to make the pleasing him, his Honour and Service the chief End of our Doings and Business of our Lives: So the Atheous unholy kind of Duties, Virtues, and good Works, are, of kind and for the main, against the Law of our Piety and Holiness towards God, and, therefore, have the Nature of Sins; they are against the Law of our Piety and Holiness, both by way of privation and opposition; for the not living unto God, is an undeifying him (as far as is in our power,) a being an Enemy to him, and a living to ourselves; the not regarding and affecting him dutifully, is a disregarding him, and a disaffecting him, and a regarding and affecting somewhat else above him and against him, and therefore the natural Man, by his unholy Kind of Virtue, is no otherwise Virtuous, than so as to be an Impietist towards God. Yet it has so much in it of the Nature of Virtue, that the Apostle styleth it “a doing the Things contain’d in the Law”; God himself hath so much respect to it, that he rewardeth it several ways: No Man, upon his Conversion, so repenteth of it, as he doth of his Sins simply so called. It is not only a doing what is materially Good (which is of good Example to others, and may be of great advantage to the Publick:) But in its Principle, impulsive Cause, and End, there is so much Good as serveth to constitute it a spurious and degenerate kind of Virtue and Well-doing, as will appear from the Heathens Principles of laudable Practice, which may be reduc’d to these Four. 1. Good-Nature and natural Instinct. 2. Human-Socialness. 3. An unholy Kind of respect for Worth and Virtue, Honesty and Duty, Justice and Equity, Reason and Ingenuity, Civility, Decency, and Order, and a like respect for himself, his own Perfection and Felicity. 4. Religion on this side true Religion.

      Of the Principles of laudable Practice amongst the Heathens.

      In the first place, Animal Temper and the kindly Instincts, which are in Animal Nature, may be call’d Good-Nature, which is a Principle of laudable Practice; for Mankind have this in common with the Brutes, of whom some are tame, tractable, placid; others are fierce and savage, and have the Name of Evil Beasts, which Name implyeth, that there are good-natur’d Beasts. Cato was of a good Nature, if, as Cicero says of him, “Nature had fram’d him to Gravity and Temperance”; or, if, as Velleius Paterculus saith, “He was therefore Virtuous, because he could not be otherwise.” Some are by natural Temper and Constitution averse from certain Vices, (Sordidness, Cruelty, Impudence;) and disposed to the contrary Virtues, (Generosity, Clemency, Modesty;) so amongst the Romans some Virtues are observ’d to have been Hereditary in certain Families in continued Succession, and great Vices, (Fury, Luxury, Libidinousness,) in others; “I am of Opinion” (saith Quintilian Declam. 260) “That the Morals of all are born with them, and the proper Virtues of every Nature.” Plato (in his Tenth of Laws) speaketh of a sort of good-natur’d Atheists, “who think that there are no Gods at all, yet are by Nature of a just Disposition, hating bad Men and Injustice, they will do no such Practices themselves, and those Men that are not just they shun, and love them that are just.” Altho’ Instances of Ferity and Barbarity are no Rarities amongst Men, yet a certain Goodness, Kindness, Benignity, and Tenderness, is part of our natural Constitution, and an effect of our bodily Temper, which so far prevaileth in the World of Mankind, that it commonly beareth the Name of Humanity, as Cruelty is call’d Inhumanity, and the Rod of Mansuetude, “the Rod of Men,” 2 Sam. 7. 14. As bodily Temper, so the kindly Instincts which are in Animal Nature, are Principles of laudable Practices. Such as natural Affection towards Children and near Kindred, Commiseration for the Afflicted, a natural Sympathy, Gratitude, and Kindness, for our Friends and Benefactors (remarkable in Dogs, Lions, and even Birds,) common Sociableness and Friendliness, particular Friendship, a Propension to please and oblige others, a natural Benignity and Generosity, desire of our own Welfare and Happiness, care of our Reputation, aversion from Infamy, Misery, and Death.

      A Second Principle of laudable Practices is a Human-Social Disposition, (which is a goodness of Nature, and in great degree an innate Instinct in Man;) for all the Human-Social and Human-Moral Virtue and Duty, commonly call’d the Political and Ethical, is compriz’d in, and may be inferr’d from, this one Principle. For all political Virtue and Duty towards Mankind in general, towards our Country, all Civil-Social Charity and Justice, the common Offices of Humanity and Civil Neighbourhood, the oeconomical Duties, Duties of near Relations and of Friendship, belong to Man as Social, as Human-Social, and he is not Man without the Human-Morals. In this great Law, great Virtue and Duty, of Man’s being Human-Social, Civil-Social (not Anti-Social) is manifestly compriz’d “a Civil-Social kind of universal Benevolence to ourselves and all Mankind, which affecteth and endeavoureth the Good of the Publick, and is opposite to what is hurtful;” ²⁷¹ from which Benevolence Universal (“Caritas humani Generis” Cicero calls it) all Mundan Political Virtue is deduceable. As it is also from another great Principle compriz’d in the Pagan Human-Social Disposition; “The Subordination and Relation of all Men, and lesser Societies of Men, to the great Body of Mankind, as of Parts to the Whole, and of Citizens to the Mundan City.”²⁷² From these Principles both the Popular and Philosophick Pagans practis’d Civil Virtue, as the Bees do in some sort, that have political Order and Government amongst them: And this their Practice of political Virtue constituted and denominated a good and just Man of their Idea. One Antenor, who wrote the Cretan History, was nam’d Δέλτα (amongst the Cretans δέλτος signified Good,) διὰ τὸ ὰγαθὸς ἐἵ καὶ ϕιλόπολις, “because he was good and a lover of his City;²⁷³ To live well” (saith Plutarch) “is to live Sociably and Friendly, and Temperately and Justly.”²⁷⁴ The generality of the Pagans suppos’d, that the observance of their political Laws constituted them just Men.

      A Third Principle of laudable Practices is a respect for Worth and Virtue, Honesty and Duty, Justice and Equity, Reason and Ingenuity, Civility, Decency, and Order; and a like respect for ourselves, our own Perfection and Felicity, without any regard to God, or Holiness. For, as there is a Human-Social Virtue, which is on this side the Holy-Social, so there is a regard for Worth and Virtue, Honesty, Reason, and Justice, which is on this side true Holiness and Godliness. The Pagans practis’d the Virtue which they teach, “fugiendae turpitudinis causa, to shun that which is base and shameful,”²⁷⁵ τοῦ καλοῦ ἕνεκα because it was Just and Good, Virtuous, or Honest.”²⁷⁶ Their Maxim was “Honestum per se expetendum, that which is Virtuous, is Self-desirable”; and some of them have said, “A Feast is nothing else but the doing one’s Duty.”²⁷⁷ Out of regard to Decency and Order, they practis’d the small Morals, (that may well be defin’d, as the Stoicks define Modesty, the Science of decent Motion,) which are the opposites to Rudeness, Rusticity, and Impoliteness of Behaviour. And for their great Morals, (altho’ their practice of them was without any regard to God, or Holiness,) their Notions were so high and generous, that they profess’d a contempt of Life, and “to throw the Body into the Fire, when Reason, when Dignity, when Fidelity, requireth it,²⁷⁸ A virtuous Man will die for his Friends and Country, he will throw away his Money and Honours, and all the Goods that Men contest about ϖριποιούμρυος ἒαυτῳ τὸ καλὸν, acquiring, or preserving to himself that which is Beautiful in matter of Life and Practice.”²⁷⁹ Miltiades taught the Athenians, “to acknowledge no Lord but the Laws, and to be afraid of nothing more than that which is Evil and Unjust”;²⁸⁰ and of Themistocles the Orator saith, “That willingly he would not set any Thing before Virtue and his Duty.²⁸¹ To be Virtuous is a great Accomplishment, and every Virtue is an Accomplishment.”²⁸² The Philosophick Pagans, therefore, (at least the better sort of them,) betook themselves to the Study and Exercise of Virtue out of regard to their Perfection and Felicity, which they suppos’d to consist in their Virtue, which in many Instances was (in some respect) very laudable and imitable. Such was the Platonists disaffecting τὰ τνὶδϵ, СКАЧАТЬ