LECT. VI. take more particular notice of questions which have been agitated respecting the necessary disinterestedness of the principles and motives of religious and moral duty, and the extent to which self-love is admissible in their exercise. In touching on the sentiments of President Edwards, and others of the same school, these questions will come before us. In the mean time, there can be no hesitation in reprobating the selfishness of the principle laid down by Dr. Paley.After explaining, in a manner not very satisfactory, what he means by obligation, he says, " From this account of obligation it "follows, that we can be obliged to nothing but "what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by; for nothing else can be a 'violent "motive' to us. As we should not be obliged “ to obey the laws, or the magistrate, unless "rewards or punishments, pleasure or pain, "somehow or other depended upon our obedi

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ence; so neither should we, without the same "reason, be obliged to do what is right, to prac"tise virtue, or to obey the commands of God."* -In distinguishing between acts of duty and acts of prudence, he afterwards sums up the distinction thus:-In both the one and the other, "we consider solely what we shall gain or lose

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by the act;"-and "the difference, the only "difference, is this, that in the one case we con"sider what we shall gain or lose in the present * Mor. and Polit. Phil. Book II. Chap. ii.

maxim, Majus et Is not the motive kind? The only

"world; in the other case, we consider also LECT. VI. "what we shall gain or lose in the world to 66 come."* May we not justly apply to this extraordinary statement the minus non variant speciem ? in either case the same in difference, avowedly, is in the amount of benefit to ourselves contemplated as the result; from which it follows, that duty, or virtue, is nothing more than a superior measure of prudence. "It is the utility of any moral rule alone," says Dr. P., "that constitutes the obligation to it :"— "Private happiness is our motive; and the will of God our rule."—It is admitted, that, from his nature, God can command nothing but what is fitted to promote the happiness of his creatures; that every precept of such a Being must be not only "holy and just," but "good." But still, it is fearful for a creature thus to shrink into the littleness of self, and to calculate all his obligations to do the will of his Creator and Sovereign solely by casting up the account of personal benefit. There is something ungenerous and ignoble in such a system, from which the mind recoils with shame.-Even on the supposition that the sole consideration which dictated the commands of the Godhead, was the happiness of his creatures, it might reasonably have been expected, that those creatures, animated by the

• Mor. and Polit. Phil. Book II. Chap. iii.

"The degree of a thing makes no difference in its nature."

LECT. VI. impulse of a generous gratitude, sensible of the

benevolence to which they were thus indebted, should, on this very account, have felt themselves bound to make the glory of their all-gracious Ruler their chief aim, and to act under the influence of this motive as their most powerful impulse. If he sought their happiness, they should seek his honour. If benevolence commanded, piety should obey. The creature who can discover no ground of obligation but in summing up the columns of self-interest (no matter whether for time or for eternity, the principle being the same) is not actuated by piety; for he is giving self the preference to God; placing his own benefit above the divine glory; professing to obey God's will, but converting the profession into an empty compliment, by rendering the obedience from an exclusive regard to his own advantage. I like not this mercantile morality;this pounds-shillings-and-pence system of obligation and duty. I come still to the same conclusion: - that, the principles of rectitude necessarily subsisting in the divine character, the commands of Deity to his creatures, were necessarily in conformity with them; - that the grounds of moral obligation lie in the essential, eternal, and immutable nature of these principles, in the relation of the great Creator to his creatures, antecedently to all other considerations; and that the happiness resulting from conformity to his will, which is the same thing

as conformity to his character, is as really the LECT. VI. native and necessary effect of these principles, as is the infinite and unchanging blessedness of the Creator himself.

In next Lecture, we shall consider the identity of morality and religion.

LECTURE VII.

ON THE IDENTITY OF MORALITY AND RELIGION.

LECT. VII. Eternity, immutability,

sality of the

morals.

1 JOHN V. 3.

"This is the love of God, that we keep his

commandments."

WE have traced the primary elements of morality back to that point where all our researches and univer- must inevitably terminate,-the necessity of the principles of Divine nature. Beyond this point we cannot go. Of the abstract subsistence of principles, independent of all being whatever, we are incapable of forming any conception; nay, the very attempt to form it involves us in immediate contradiction. There can be no principles without mind; and to annihilate mind is to annihilate principles. Even the imaginary annihilation of mind, moreover, is beyond our power; for were we capable of realizing in fancy the cessation of all existence but our own,-our own remains, mocking all our efforts at self-extinction. We still survive, in conscious being, contemplating