it is a thing which we shall very easily demonstrate, that moral good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest, (if they be not mere names without any signification, or names for nothing else but willed or commanded, but have a reality in respect of the persons obliged to do and avoid them,) cannot possibly be arbitrary things made by will without nature; because it is universally true, that things are what they are, not by will, but by nature. As, for example, things are white by whiteness, and black by blackness, triangular by triangularity, and round by rotundity; likeness by likeness, and equal by equality; that is, by such certain natures of their own. Neither can omnipotence itself (to speak with reverence) by mere will make a thing white or black, without whiteness or blackness; that is, without such certain natures, whether we consider them as qualities in the objects without us, according to the peripatetic philosophy, or as certain disposition of parts in respect to magnitude, figure, site, and motion, which beget these sensations or phantasms of white and black in us—or to instance in geometrical figures, Omnipotence itself cannot by mere will make a body triangular, without having the nature and properties of a triangle in it; that is, without having three angles equal to

two right ones, nor circular without the nature of a circle; that is, without having a circumference equidistant everywhere from the centre or middle point. Or lastly, to instance in things relative only, Omnipotent will cannot make things like or equal one to another, without the nature of likeness and equality. The reason whereof is plain, because all these things imply a manifest contradiction, that things should be what they are not; and this is a truth fundamentally necessary to all knowedge, that contradictories cannot be true; for otherwise nothing would be certainly true or false. New things may as well be made white or black by mere will, without whiteness or blackness, equal and unequal, with equality and unequality, as morally good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest, by mere will, without any nature of goodness, justice, honesty.

For though the will of

God be the supreme efficient cause of all things, and can produce into being or existence, or reduce into nothing what it pleaseth, yet it is not the formal cause of anything besides itself, as the schoolmen have determined, in these words, that God himself cannot supply the place of a formal cause: and, therefore, it cannot supply the formal cause or nature of justice or injustice, honesty or dishonesty.

Now all that we have hitherto said amounts to no more than this, that it is impossible anything should be by will only, that is, without a nature or entity, or that the nature and essence of anything should be arbitrary."*

This quotation may be said to contain the principles of Dr. Cudworth's system. The reader will perceive, that he maintains that good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest, cannot be things created by any will, even the will of the Deity; but must be such by nature. Every thing must be in its own nature what it really is, and can be nothing else. In positive laws and commands, it is not mere will which clothes them with moral validity, but the inward nature of these laws themselves. No positive laws can make a command either morally good or evil, otherwise than by nature of what is really naturally just.

As we will examine the truth of this doctrine at considerable length, in other parts of these volumes, it would be only tedious repetition to enlarge any further upon it here. It may, however, be merely remarked in passing, that the views which Dr. Cudworth seemed to entertain on the nature

* Treatise on Eternal Morality, p. 16.

of virtue, were grounded upon the notion that there was a complete and perfect analogy between the truths of mathematical science, and the truths in matters of morality. This opinion seems to have been firmly rivetted in his mind. His reasonings from this position, coupled with the sense in which he used the words eternal and immutable when applied to morality, form the ground-work of what Bayle, Le Clerc, Shaftesbury, and others, have advanced against his system; and gave them an opportunity of calling in question the orthodoxy of his opinions, and the utility of his writings, so far as the refuting of sceptics was concerned. But a sincere respect for his character and talents compels us to remark, that there is not the slightest foundation for suspecting the purity of his motives in coming forward as the champion of rational religion and sound morality.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE LAWS OF NATURE.

BISHOP CUMBERLAND.

RICHARD CUMBERLAND was born in London in the year 1682. He was removed to Magdalen College, Cambridge, in the year 1649. In the early part of life he entertained thoughts of embracing the medical profession, but relinquished that design, and entered into holy orders. In 1672, he published his treatise, entitled "A Philosophical Inquiry into the Laws of Nature," in quarto; a publication which obtained for its author no small share of reputation He was made bishop by King William in 1691, the duties of which he discharged in a very exemplary manner. He died in 1718,

in the eighty-seventh year of his age.

It may be considered as truly a matter of surprise to the moral reader, that a book such as Bishop