SERM. Now if these observations be true and just, III. (and whether they are or not, let every man upon calm reflexion judge for himself) let us see what confequences may be fairly drawn from them to our present purpose. In the first place, here is an important part of the human conftitution which can never be accounted for upon Atheistic grounds, that is chance or mechanism, the fortuitous rencounter of atoms, or the neceffary refult of matter and motion. Suppofing an accidental concourse of atoms moving in an infinite void, or an undirected force imprefs'd on matter, could poffibly produce corporeal systems and their various beautiful forms which we fee, (tho' even that has been already prov'd to be fufficiently abfurd,) yet how shall this hypothesis folve the phænomena of moral Entities? What strange collifion of atoms, or undirected impulse of matter, could produce beauty and deformity in human characters and actions? Could any combination of figures, or difpofition and agitation of material parts, ftrike out the ideas of just and unjust, kind and unkind, fober and vicious? Shall it be faid that these are mere fancies, the arbitrary figments of the mind without any true and folid foundation in nature? I answer, that indeed our ideas of morality are not ideas of corporeal existence,

but

but it does not follow that therefore they are SERM. not real. Let any man try how he can fatisfy III. himself concerning the reality of any object of his knowledge. If his organs are duly dif pos'd, if he is conscious to himself that he has the free and undisturb'd exercise of his rational powers, if his perceptions be clear and diftinct, and especially if they be conftant and uniform, his ideas always the fame, independently of his own choice, whenever he applies his mind to the review of them;--when it is fo, there can be no doubt concerning the reality of such knowledge, unless we introduce an univerfal scepticism. Can any man in his fenses make it a question whether his ideas of colours, and tastes and founds, be real or phantaftical? As little reafon has he to doubt the reality of his ideas of pure, and true, and just,` and honeft, and virtuous. In the best state of his mind, when his understonding is clearest and freeft from difturbance, whenever he thinks of moral differences, they appear always the fame; nay, the more he confiders them, the more plain and important they appear. Can we doubt whether a thing exists which caufes in us pleasure or pain, whether we will or not? for example, whether the fire exifts which warms or burns us? whether a sharp iron inftrument exifts, which piercing

SERM. our flesh caufes the fenfation of acute pain? In III. like manner, has any man reason to doubt whether there be a real difference between virtuous difpofitions and works, which diffufe inward ferenity and fatisfaction through his mind, and vicious ones which neceffarily fill him with horror and the most painful felfcondemnation? We muft, therefore, to account for this appearance, abandon the Atheific scheme and all the forms of it, and have our recourse to an intelligent Caufe, which has deeply interwoven into the human constitution a fense of things intirely independent on matter and all its properties and powers, as real however as any we perceive by our external fenfes; concerning which we can form propofitions as true and certain, and draw confequences from them as clear as any which appear to our minds. For even the properties of lines and geometrical figures, and the incommenfurability of fome with others, is not -more evident than the moral fitnefs and unfitnefs of fome actions.

2dly, The importance of morality to the human life, and to its main ends, fhews wif dom and defign in giving men the fenfe and knowledge of it. Political conftitutions are reasonably judg'd to be form'd with underftanding, because of the ends which they an

fwer.

pre-SERM.

III.

fwer. When laws are well fram'd for the pre- SERM. fervation of public peace and order; the mea fures of civil authority and fubjection wifely fettled; provifion made for fupporting the legal powers of the rulers, and liberties of the people; for fecuring them against foreign invafions and inteftine broils, for deciding their debates about property in an equitable manner, for encouraging induftry and other virtues, which tend to the benefit of the fociety, and restraining those irregularities which threaten its deftruction;when all this is apparent in the conftitution of any community, no one will attribute it to a cafual unconcerted encounter of men, fince there are fo plain evidences of wisdom and defign in the whole scheme. As little reafon is there to imagine, that when a fpecies of intelligent beings are fent into the world with fentiments of morality, which are fo evidently conducive to their happiness, tending to improve their nature, to ennoble the life of every one of them, filling it with a variety of rational pleasure, and to render them eminently ufeful to one another, fo that it is hardly to be conceiv'd to what a height of perfection and felicity they would be rais'd, if these moral fentiments were duly improv'd and had their full effect, and on the other hand how miferable the whole race would

SERM. Would be, if intirely deftitute of them; it is III. unreasonable, I say, to imagine that this should be without a directing Intelligence in the Cause of it.

Nothing can be more groundless and unsupported with any pretence of reason, than

to alledge that the notions of morality, fo common and prevailing in the world, were originally invented by politicians, and by their artifice impos'd upon credulous mankind, as the dictates of nature. For, (befides that ftrict virtue is often too little agreeable to the maxims and measures of their policy, to give

.it

any appearance of proceeding from such an original;) every man who will look carefully into his own heart, may find there a standard of right and wrong, prior to any inftructions, declarations and laws of men, whereby he pronounces judgment upon them. Nor was it ever known that any human invention, or any thing which was not the voice of reafon and nature itself, appeared fo uniform and unvaried, always confiftent with itself, and always in the fame light to the minds of men, as the principal moral fpecies do. The forms of civil government differ according to the circumstances and inclinations of the people who create them: the external forms of religion too are yariable ;