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for our happiness. For we are framed and constituted with such passions and affections as do naturally point and direct us unto virtuous actions; and though by the constitution of our natures, our passions are subjected to our reason, and all our virtue consists in being reasonably affected; yet in the very nature of our passions there is a certain tendency and direction to virtue, antecedent to all our reasoning and discourse. Which Theognes the Pythagorean styles παρόρμησις, καὶ ἐνθουσιασμὸς τὰς Kaтà púσi åpeтãs, "a certain natural impetus or enthusiasm, by which, without any previous dis"course or deliberation, we are forcibly carried on "towards virtuous actions." For some affections there are in our nature which do in the general plainly signify to us, that there is such a thing as moral good and evil in human actions; and others that do plainly point out what those actions are wherein this moral good and evil is subjected. Of the first sort are the affections of love and hatred, complacency and horror, glory and shame, repentance and self-satisfaction; which plainly declare that there are answerable objects in the nature of things and actions; that there is a good to be beloved, and an evil to be hated; a deformity to be abhorred, and a beauty to be delighted in; an excellency to be gloried in, and a filthiness to be ashamed of; a welldoing to be satisfied with, and an ill-doing to be repented of. For if there were no such real distinctions in the nature of things and actions, all these affections in us would be utterly vain and impertinent. And as these affections of our nature do signify in the general, that there is a moral good and evil in our actions; so there are others, which do

particularly point out what actions are morally good, and what evil. Thus, for instance, the passions of veneration and disdain do plainly direct us to honour God and our superiors, and to be constant in good courses out of a generous scorn of all temptations to the contrary. Thus commiseration and envy direct us to charity and justice, to lament and assist those who are undeservedly unfortunate, and to be displeased with the advancement of base and undeserving people; and consequently to be just and equal in our distributions, and to proportion them to men's merit and desert. For by this passion of envy nature teaches us, that there is such a thing as just and unjust, equal and unequal, and that the former is to be embraced, and the latter to be shunned. And to name no more, thus sorrow and joy do by silent language dissuade us from injuring, and persuade us to benefit one another. For so by the mournful voice, the dejected eyes and countenance, the sighs and groans and tears of the sorrowful and oppressed, (all which are the powerful rhetoric of nature,) we are importuned, not only to forbear heaping any further injuries upon them, but also to commiserate their griefs, and by our timely aids to succour and relieve them. As on the contrary the florid and cheerful looks, the pleasant and grateful air, which we behold in those that rejoice, are so many charms and attractives, by which nature allures us to mutual urbanity and sweetness of behaviour, and a continual study to please and gratify one another. By these and many other instances I might give, it is evident, that though by our own ill government we too often deprave our affections, and corrupt them into vices, yet their natural drift and tendency lies towards virtue. Thus Gg

VOL. I.

by their own natural light which they carry before us, they direct our steps to the way we are to walk in, and point out all those tracts of eternal goodness that lead to our happiness. For since these affections are in us antecedently to all our deliberations, and choices, it is evident they were placed there by the Author of our natures; and therefore since it is he who hath inclined them to all that they naturally incline to, he doth in effect direct and guide us by their inclinations. So that their natural tendencies and directions are the voice of God in our natures, which murmurs and whispers to us that natural law which our reason indeed doth more plainly and articulately promulge. And from this natural tendency of our affections to good, proceeds that pleasant and painful sense of good and bad actions, which we experience in ourselves before ever we can discourse. For thus, before we are capable of reasoning ourselves into any pleasure or displeasure, our nature is rejoiced in a kind of just action either in ourselves or others; and we are sensibly pleased when we have pleasured those that oblige us, and as sensibly grieved when we are conscious of having grieved and offended them. We love to see those fare well who we imagine have deserved well; and when any unjust violence is offered them, our nature shrinks at and abhors it. We pity and compassionate the miserable when we know not why; and are ready to offer at their relief, when we can give no reason for it: which shews that these things proceed not either from our education or deliberate choice, but from the nature of our affections, which have a sympathy with virtue and an antipathy to vice implanted in our very constitution. And hence it is, that, in the beginnings

of sin, our nature is commonly so shy of an evil action; that it approaches it with such a modest coyness, and goes blushing to it like a bashful virgin to an adulterer's bed; that it passes into it with such regret and reluctancy, and looks back upon it with such shame and confusion; which in our tender years, when as yet we are not arrived to the exercise of our understandings, cannot be supposed to proceed from reason and conscience, and therefore must be from the natural sense of our affections, which by these and such like indications do signify that they are violated and offended. Now this natural sense of good and evil, which springs from the frame and nature of our affections, was doubtless intended by God to be the first guide of human nature; that so, when as yet it is not capable of following reason and conscience, it might be directed to what is good, and preserved from wicked habits and prejudices by its own sense and feeling, till such time as it is capable of the conduct of reason; that so, when this leading faculty undertakes the charge of it, it may find it pliant and obsequious to its dictates; and be able to manage it with more ease and facility; and that, by the natural drift and tendency of our affections, God hath plainly revealed to us what is good and what not.

IV. God hath also entailed upon our actions natural rewards and punishments, and thereby plainly declared which are good and which evil. For it is easily demonstrable, by an induction of particulars, that every virtue hath some natural efficacy in it to advance both our public good and our private interest. That temperance and charity, righteousness and fidelity, gratitude and humility, are not only con

venient, but absolutely necessary to our joy and comfort, our peace and quietness, our safety and contentment; to the health of our body and the satisfaction of our mind, and the security and happiness of our society with one another. Whereas, on the contrary, vice naturally teems with mischievous effects, and is ever productive of horror in the conscience, anguish in the mind, discord in the affections, diseases in the body, and confusions and disturbances in human society. Since therefore the divine wisdom and contrivance hath thus inseparably coupled good effects to good actions and evil ones to evil, it hath hereby very plainly and sensibly declared to us, what it would have us do, and what not. For seeing it hath so constituted things, as that, in the course of nature, such proportions of happiness do necessarily result to us from such actions, and such proportions of misery from their contraries, what can be more evident than that its design was hereby to encourage us to the one, and affright us from the other? So that, by these natural rewards and punishments, which in the course of things God hath chained to our actions, he hath as expressly prescribed us what to do and what not, as he could have done if he had spoken to us in an audible voice from the battlements of heaven. For since the whole train of natural effects is to be resolved into the providence of God, and since his providence hath so ordered and contrived things, as that in the ordinary course of them good effects do spring out of good actions, and evil of evil ones, what else could he intend by it, but to allure us to the one, and terrify us from the other? For it is by rewards and punishments that all lawgivers declare their will and pleasure concerning those actions which they