stitution of nature, and which are acknowledged, on all hands, to be completely independent of revelation. The Scriptures do not alter the nature of that moral evidence which we derive from the exercise of our various faculties, and from our station in the scale of social existence; they only strengthen that evidence where it is feebly given, and direct, modify, and apply it to purposes of a lofty and ennobling character.

"20. The salutary influence, then, which a revealed religion exercises over our moral characters, must arise, not from any change in its effects in moral relations abstractedly considered, but in making those relations more attended to by us, as inducing men to look upon them as being purely and simply the will of God, and as becoming invested with additional obligations by reason of his command.

"21. All the arguments in favour of Christianity, drawn from what are termed its external evidences, do merely express thus much,-that such and such things are commanded to be done or to be avoided; and that certain rewards and punishments are attached to these actions, and these commands and arrangements of Providence proceed from the will and desire of the Most High. Writers on the ex

ternal evidences tell us, in substance, that of the fitness or unfitness, the propriety or impropriety of the doctrines and duties found in the Scriptures, we are not at liberty to speak,-nor whether the important object of a revelation might or might not have been accomplished in any other manner than we find it to have been. The question is, can we bring forward a sufficient portion of evidence to show that the Bible is the word of God, and was sent to man to be a rule for his conduct? If this can be answered in the affirmative, then all the objections which may be urged against any particular doctrines or precepts contained therein, upon the ground that we cannot by our reason sufficiently comprehend the one, or perceive the utility of the other, must necessarily fall to the ground; and the seemingly objectionable matter must remain as strictly obligatory upon us to believe and practise, as other doctrines and precepts which appear more level to our understandings; and for this sole reason, that we find what is above our reason to be contained in the Scriptures, which are defined to be the revealed will of God to man."

183

CHAPTER IX.

RELIGION OF NATURE DELINEATED.

MR. WILLIAM WOLLASTON.

MR. WOLLASTON was descended from an ancient family in the county of Stafford, and was born in the year 1659. In 1674 he became a pensioner in Sidney College, Cambridge, and obtained a small situation near Birmingham. From the death of a relation in 1688, he fortunately became the heir to a considerable landed estate, which relieved him from the embarrassments he had previously experienced, and enabled him to spend the remainder of his life in literary ease and comfort. About the year 1722, he published his Treatise, entitled "The Religion of Nature Delineated," and so well received was this work, that it is said ten thousand copies were sold in the space of a very few years. From an intimation in the introductory part of the

treatise, he seems to have meditated a work on revealed religion, which, however, never made its appearance. He died in 1724, aged 76 years.

The moral theory of Mr. Wollaston is founded upon nearly the same principle as that of Dr. Clerk's. The Doctor imagines virtue or merit to consist in regulating our conduct agreeably to certain fitnesses of things; and Mr. Wollaston says, for a man to act virtuously, he must square his conduct according to the truth of things; or treat every thing according to its real character, or as it really is. His thoughts on morals are principally contained in the first section of his treatise,— "The Religion of Nature Delineated." This section, which professes to treat of moral good and evil, is occupied with his illustration of eleven propositions, which contain nearly the whole of what may, with propriety, be termed his speculations on morality; and as the book is somewhat rare, I shall here transcribe these propositions, for the use of those who may not be able readily to procure it.

1st. That act, which may be denominated morally good or evil, must be the act of a being capable

3

of distinguishing, choosing, and acting for himself; or, more briefly, of an intelligent and free agent.

His opinions on the freedom of the human will, and of the connexion which subsists between human liberty and our conceptions of good and evil, seem to be nearly the same as those promulgated by King and Cumberland. On the freedom of the divine will, his principles and language are precisely the same as those which these two writers bring forward. He says, "If there is a Supreme Being, upon whom the existence of the world depends, and nothing can be in it but what he either causes or permits to be, then to own things to be as they are is to own what he causes, or at least permits, to be thus caused or permitted; and this is to take things as he gives them, to go into his constitution of the world, and to submit to his will, revealed in the book of nature. To do this, therefore, must be agreeable to his will. And if so, the contrary must be disagreeable to it; and, since (as we shall find in due time) there is a perfect rectitude in his will, certainly wrong.

1

2d. Those propositions are true which express things as they are; or truth is the conformity of