3. They are pleased with the virtue itself, and their soul is as much delighted with it, and as naturally, as the eye with beauteous colours, or the throat with unctuous juices, or the tongue with moist sweetnesses. For God hath made virtue proportionably to all the noble ends and worthy desires of mankind, and the proper instrument of his felicity : and all its beauties, and all its works, and all its effects, and all that for which it can be loved, is part of the reward. And therefore, to say a man can love virtue for virtue's sake, and without consideration of the reward, is to say a man can love virtue without any reason and inducement, without any argument to move his affections. 6 4. For there can be but two causes of amability in the world, perfection and usefulness; that is, beauty and profit; that in the thing itself, this as it relates to me: now he that says, a man may love virtue for its own sake without consideration of the reward,' says no more than that' a man may love a flower which he never hopes to smell of;' that is, he may admire and commend it, and love to look on it, and just so he may do to virtue. But if he desires either, it is because it is profitable or useful to him, and hath something that will delight him; it cannot else possibly be desired. Now to love virtue in the first sense is rather praise than love, an act of understanding rather than of the will, and its object is properly the perfections of the flower or the virtue respectively but when it comes to be desired, that is, loved with a relation to myself, it hath for its object other perfections, those things that please, and that delight me, and that is nothing but part of the reward or all of it. The question being thus explicated, it follows, that to love virtue for virtue's sake, is so far from being the honour of a good and perfect man, that it is the character of an evil man, if it goes no further. For it amounts to nothing but this, that the understanding is convinced of the worthiness of it, Video meliora proboque.b It is that which St. Paul calls "a delighting in the law after the inner man." But it is a relative, material, practical love b Ov. M. vii. 20. Gierig, vol. i p. 421. of virtue that makes a good man; and the proper inducement of that is also relative, material, and practical. Est profecto Deus, qui quæ nos gerimus, auditque et videt, Bene merenti, bene profuerit; male merenti par erit ; c said the comedian; "God hath so endeared justice and virtue to us, that he hearing and seeing all things, gives good things to them that do good things; but he will be even with the evil man." 5. Lastly, to love virtue for virtue's sake, is to love it without consideration of human rewards, praise of men, honours, riches, rest, power, and the like, which indeed are the hinges of most men's actions. Cura, quid expediat, prius est, quam quid sit honestum ; Et cum fortuna statque caditque fides. Nec facile invenias multis in millibus unum, Virtutem pretium, qui putet, esse sui. Ipse decor, recte, facti si præmia desint, Non movet: et gratis pœnitet esse probum. Now he that is a good man, and loves virtue virtuously, does not love it principally for these secular regards; but without such low expectations, and without apprehension of the angry sentence of the laws; but this does not exclude the intuition of the Divine reward from having an influence into the most perfect love of virtue; for this is intrinsical to the sanction and the nature of the law; the other is extrinsical and accidental. The first is such a reward as is the perfection of the work; for glory is the perfection of grace; and he that serves God for hope of glory, loves goodness for goodness' sake; for he pursues the interest of goodness, that he may be filled with goodness; he serves God here that he may serve him hereafter: he does it well that he may do it better; a little while that he may do it over again for ever and ever. Nothing else can be a loving virtue for virtue's sake; this is the greatest perfection and the most reasonable and practicable sense of doing it. And if the rewards of virtue were not the great practical inducement of good men's In Capt. Plaut. act. ii. scen. 2. Ernesti, vol.i. d Ovid. Ex Pont. ii. 3, 9. Harles, p. 378. page 158. love to goodness, all the promises of the Gospel were to no purpose in relation to the faith of good men, and therefore the greatest and the best part of faith itself would be useless: for there is no purpose or end of faith of the promises, but to enable our obedience, by the credibility and expectation of such promises, to do our duty. Now that even good men, even the best men, even all men, have a habitual regard to it, besides that it is impossible to be otherwise (for he that ploughs, does plough in hope), and will easily be understood to be so by them who know the causes and nature of things; it appears also in the instance of as good a man as any story reports of, even Moses; who "despised to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, because he had an eye to the recompense of reward:" and by the instance of all those brave persons whom St. Paul enumerates in the eleventh chapter to the Hebrews; "who all died in faith, not having received the promises;' but they looked for better, even such as were to come; and beyond all this, our blessed Lord himself "despised shame, and endured the cross;" but it was "for the glory that was set before him." For it is the first and the greatest article of the Gentiles' creed, "Every one that comes to God, must believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” e 11. The sum is this; although in nature herself, and in the conscience relating to her, there is a court punitive and a fear of God, yet the expectation of reward is rather put into us than born with us, and revealed rather than natural: and therefore the expectation of good is the second band of natural laws, but extrinsical and adventitious, communicated to us by revelation and by grace. RULE V. The Imperfection of some Provisions in civil Laws is supplied by the natural Obligation remaining upon Persons civilly incapable. WHEN laws make provision of cases Ti Tò λεtorov, in as many things as they can foresee, or feel, and yet some things e Heb. xii. 2, 3. VOL. XII. R will emerge which cannot be foreseen, and some contrary reasons will arise ;—many times there is no care taken for some things and some persons by any constitutions of man. Here Nature, as the common parent of all justice and necessary obligations, takes the case into her protection. This happens in many cases: 1. Human laws give measures of things and persons, which fit most men without a sensible error, but some it does not. Young persons are, at a certain age, declared capable of making profitable contracts; at another age, of making contracts that are hazardous; and they must stand to them, though they be mischievous. At one age they may marry; at another, they may contract a debt; at another, they may make a testament; at another, they may be punished with capital inflictions. But in some persons, the malice is earlier and the wit more pregnant, and the sense of their advantages brisk enough: and therefore the contracts which they can make,—and the actions which they do,—and the part which they choose, are really made or done, or chosen; but they are not bound to stand to it, by the civil law: and yet if they can choose, they are naturally obliged. Both of them are necessary the civil law cannot provide but by common measures; Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum.a All their rules are made by as common a measure as they can, and they are the best rules that have the fewest exceptions: the best carpenters make the fewest chips: but some there must be. But then it is necessary that nature should provide by single provisions in all the single exceptions; for it is necessary it should be done, and she only can do it. She can do it because nature hath provided and instructed a judging and a discerning conscience; and the person that contracts or receives a benefit, can bind himself to man as soon as he can bind himself to God; because the laws of God bind all our contracts with men. That is, plainly thus, God's laws provide not only for general cases, but also for particular circumstances; and of every thing God, and God's vicegerent, conscience, can take accounts; and therefore this abundance supplies the other's defect; the perfection a Horace. b of God makes up the breaches of the imperfection of man. Which rule is to be understood both of things and persons. For all our duty is only an obedience to God: and every one that can hope or fear, is bound to this obedience; therefore there can be no gap here: God hath, in every thing, shut up every person that can use reason, by some instrument or other. And therefore Cicero said well, "Nec si regnante Tarquinio nulla erat Romæ scripta lex de stupris, idcirco non contra illam legem sempiternam Sextus Tarquinius vim Lucretia Tricipitini filiæ adtulit: erat enim ratio profecta à rerum natura, et ad recte faciendum impellens, et à delicto avocans;―There was no civil constitution against rapes, but Tarquin ought not to have done it: for there was an eternal law against it. For right reason, proceeding from nature, drives us on to good, and calls us off from evil:"that is, he could not but know it was ill, and against reason, and against every thing by which he ought to be governed; and even to the heathen God was not wanting, but bound these laws upon them by reason, and inclination, and necessity, and fame, and example, and contract, and hope, and fear, and by secret ways which we know not of. He made some inclinations and some reason to become laws, that mankind might not live like beasts and birds of prey: in all cases, and in all times, and to all persons, he became a lord and a lawgiver, some way or other. Young persons, of twelve or fourteen years old, can be saved or damned; they can love or hate; they can understand yea and nay; they can do a good turn or a shrewd; they can lead blind man right or wrong; they can bear true or false witness: and although the civil laws, out of care lest their easiness be abused by crafty people, make them secure from it by nulling the contract, that the deceiving person may not reap the harvest of his fraud, yet there are very many cases in which the minor receives advantage, or at the least no wrong; and though it was fit he should be secured, it was not fit he should be enabled to do a mischief to another, "ut levamen his, aliis sit onus," as St. Paul in a like case, "that they be eased, and others burdened." For although the other contractor be sufficiently warned to b Lib. ii. de Leg. c. 4. Davis. Rath. p. 107. |