ever judgment may be formed of this reasoning, it is manifest that it relates merely to the philosophy of the Understanding, and does not attempt any explanation of what constitutes the very essence of Morality, —its relation to the Will. That we perceive a distinction between Right and Wrong, as much as between a triangle and a square, is indeed true; and may possibly lead to an explanation of the reason why men should adhere to the one and avoid the other. But it is not that reason. A command or a precept is not a proposition: it cannot be said that either is true or false. Cudworth, as well as many who succeeded him, confounded the mere apprehension by the Understanding that Right is different from Wrong, with the practical authority of these important conceptions, exercised over voluntary actions, in a totally distinct province of the human soul. Though his life was devoted to the assertion of Divine Providence, and though his philosophy was imbued with the religious spirit of Platonism*, yet he had placed Christianity too purely in the love of God and Man to be considered as having much regard for those controversies about rights and opinions with which zealots disturb the world. They represented him as having fallen into the same heresy with Milton and with Clarket; and some of them even charged him with atheism, for no other reason than that he was not afraid to state the atheistic difficulties in their fullest force. As blind anger heaps inconsistent accusations on each other, they called him at least * Ευσέβει, ω τέκνον, ὁ γαρ ευσέβων ἄχρως Χριστιανίζει. (Motto affixed to the sermon above mentioned.) The following doctrine is ascribed to Cudworth by Nelson, a man of good understanding and great worth: "Dr. Cudworth maintained that the Father, absolutely speaking, is the only supreme God: the Son and Spirit being God only by his concurrence with them, and their subordination and subjection to ❝an Arian, a Socinian, or a Deist.” * The courtiers of Charles II., who were delighted with every part of Hobbes but his integrity, did their utmost to decry his antagonist. They turned the railing of the bigots into a sarcasm against Religion; as we learn from him who represented them with unfortunate fidelity. "He has raised," says Dryden, "such strong objections against the being of God, that many think he has not answered them; "the common fate," as Lord Shaftesbury tells us, "of those who dare to appear fair authors."† He had, indeed, earned the hatred of some theologians, better than they could know from the writings published during his life; for in his posthumous work he classes with the ancient atheists those of his contemporaries (whom he forbears to name), who held "that God may command what is contrary to moral rules; that He has no inclination to the good of His creatures; that He may justly doom an innocent being to eternal torments; and that whatever God does will, for that reason is just, because He wills it." + It is an interesting incident in the life of a philosopher, that Cudworth's daughter, Lady Masham, had the honour to nurse the infirmities and to watch the last breath of Mr. Locke, who was opposed to her father in speculative philosophy, but who heartily agreed with him in the love of Truth, Liberty, and Virtue. *Turner's Discourse on the Messiah, 335. † Moralists, part ii. § 3. Etern. and Immut. Mor. 11. He quotes Ockham as having formerly maintained the same monstrous positions. To many, if not to most of these opinions or expressions, ancient and modern, reservations are adjoined, which render them literally reconcilable with practical Morals. But the dangerous abuse to which the incautious language of ethical theories is liable, is well illustrated by the anecdote related in Plutarch's Life of Alexander, of the sycophant Anaxarchas consoling that monarch for the murder of Clitus, by assuring him that every act of a ruler must be just. Πᾶν το πραχθεν ὑπο του κρατοῦντος δίκαιον. Op. i. 639. Connected with Cudworth by principle, though separated by some interval of time, was Dr. Samuel Clarke, a man eminent at once as a divine, a mathematician, a metaphysical philosopher, and a philologer; who, as the interpreter of Homer and Cæsar, the scholar of Newton, and the antagonist of Leibnitz, approved himself not unworthy of correspondence with the highest order of human Spirits. Roused by the prevalence of the doctrines of Spinoza and Hobbes, he endeavoured to demonstrate the Being and Attributes of God, from a few axioms and definitions, in the manner of Geometry. In this attempt, with all his powers of argument, it must be owned that he is compelled sometimes tacitly to assume what the laws of reasoning required him to prove; and that, on the whole, his failure may be regarded as a proof that such a mode of argument is beyond the faculties of man. Justly considering the Moral Attributes of the Deity as what alone render him the object of Religion, and to us constitutes the difference between Theism and atheism, he laboured with the utmost zeal to place the distinctions of Right and Wrong on a more solid foundation, and to explain the conformity of Morality to Reason, in a manner calculated to give a precise and scientific signification to that phraseology which all philosophers had, for so many ages, been content to employ, without thinking themselves obliged to define. Born, 1675; died, 1729. †This admirable person had so much candour as in effect to own his failure, and to recur to those other arguments in support of this great truth, which have in all ages satisfied the most elevated minds. In Proposition viii. (Being and Attributes of God, 47.) which affirms that the first cause must be "intelligent" (wherein, as he truly states, "lies the main question between us and the atheists "), he owns, that the proposition cannot be demonstrated strictly and properly à priori. See Note M. It is one of the most rarely successful efforts of the human mind, to place the understanding at the point from which a philosopher takes the views that compose his system, to recollect constantly his purposes, to adopt for a moment his previous opinions and prepossessions, to think in his words and to see with his eyes;-especially when the writer widely dissents from the system which he attempts to describe, and after a general change in the modes of thinking and in the use of terms. Every part of the present Dissertation requires such an excuse; but perhaps it may be more necessary in a case like that of Clarke, where the alterations in both respects have been so insensible, and in some respects appear so limited, that they may escape attention, than after those total revolutions in doctrine, where the necessity of not measuring other times by our own standard must be apparent to the most undistinguishing. The sum of his moral doctrine may be stated as follows. Man can conceive nothing without at the same time conceiving its relations to other things. He must ascribe the same law of perception to every being to whom he ascribes thought. He cannot therefore doubt that all the relations of all things to all must have always been present to the Eternal Mind. The relations in this sense are eternal, however recent the things may be between whom they subsist. The whole of these relations constitute Truth: the knowledge of them is Omniscience. These eternal different relations of things involve a consequent eternal fitness or unfitness in the application of things, one to another; with a regard to which, the will of God always chooses, and which ought likewise to determine the wills of all subordinate rational beings. These eternal differences make it fit and reasonable for the creatures so to act; they cause it to be their duty, or lay an obligation on them so to do, separate from the will of God, and * « Those who found all moral obligation on the will of God antecedent to any prospect of advantage or reward.* Nay, wilful wickedness is the same absurdity and insolence in Morals, as it would be in natural things to pretend to alter the relations of numbers, or to take away the properties of mathematical figures.† "Morality," says one of his most ingenious scholars, "is the practice of reason.”‡ Clarke, like Cudworth, considered such a scheme as the only security against Hobbism, and probably also against the Calvinistic theology, from which they were almost as averse. Not content, with Cumberland, to attack Hobbes on ground which was in part his own, they thought it necessary to build on entirely new foundations. Clarke more especially, instead of substituting social and generous feeling for the selfish appetites, endeavoured to bestow on Morality the highest dignity, by thus deriving it from Reason. He made it more than disinterested; for he placed its seat in a region where interest never enters, and passion never disturbs. By ranking her principles with the first truths of Science, he seemed to render them pure and impartial, infallible and unchangeable. It might be excusable to regret the failure of so noble an attempt, if the indulgence of such regrets did not betray an unworthy apprehension that the same excellent ends could only be attained by such frail means; and that the dictates of the most severe reason would not finally prove reconcilable with the majesty of Virtue. must recur to the same thing, only they do not explain how the nature and will of God is good and just." Being and Attributes of God, Proposition xii. * Evidence of Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 4. Lond. 1724. † Ibid. p. 42. 1737. Lowman on the Unity and Perfections of God, p. 29. Lond. |