with remorse for the omission of any duty but such as results from the natural relations of man to his Maker, and to his fellow-creatures. Yet many a good Christian feels as much remorse on having profaned the Lord's Day as he would feel on having overreached his neighbour in any commercial transaction; and, in Scotland, the mode of observing the Lord's Day in all other Christian nations, is so generally abhorred, that there are numbers, who, should they on any occasion be tempted to listen to instrumental music on that day, would be as severely condemned by their own consciences, or moral sense, as if they had spent their time in drinking to excess, or in any other immoral amusement. The feeling which is excited by deeds so very different as these, cannot have been imprinted in the mind by Him with whom "is no variableness, neither shadow of turning;" nor can it in all cases be a safe rule of conduct. It is in reality a factitious sense; and how it is acquired you will find clearly explained by Hartley in his Observations on Man, and by the Reverend Mr Gay in his Dissertation concerning the Fundamental Principles of Virtue or Morality, generally prefixed to Bishop Law's edition of King's Origin of Evil. It is formed by the mental law of association or suggestion; and in the ordinary occurrences of life, it may be safely relied on in every country where Christianity is publicly professed; but even in such countries, cases may occur in which it will be necessary to trace back the

moral sense to its source, in order to ascertain whether the particular action to which it prompts be indeed agreeable to the will of God; for if it be not, it cannot be virtuous nor obligatory on man.

LETTER V.

ON THE DEFECTS OF NATURAL RELIGION, AND THE NECESSITY OF REVELATION.

HAVING in the preceding Letter placed moral duty on its true foundation, so far as it comprehends the conduct of mankind towards each other, and shown that it rests on the will of God, and therefore constitutes a very essential part of natural religion, you may perhaps expect me to point out the books in which you will find the particular duties of every individual deduced from these general principles with the greatest perspicuity. Many duties are indeed so obviously calculated to produce universal happiness, were they universally practised, that there can be no doubt about them. Such are truth, temperance, kindness, and justice; but there are others, which, when prescribed in the Holy Scriptures, are so clearly seen to have the same beneficent tendency, that we are apt to suppose, I think erroneously, that an enlightened mind, without the aid of revelation, might deduce them from

the relations in which we stand to God and to each other. Such are, the forgiveness of injuries; the indissoluble union of one man to one woman; and the accumulation of property to be bequeathed to our children, or to any other person or persons to whom we may choose to leave it.

That a placable temper is calculated to promote the peace, and, of course, the happiness of society, we know by experience; but I doubt whether the most enlightened uninspired mind that ever existed, would, prior to experience, have been led to infer, from the relations in which mankind stand to God and to each other, that to forgive repeated injuries would increase the sum of human happiness; or that the indissoluble union of one man to one woman, or the accumulation of property beyond what is necessary for each person's comfort during life, would contribute to this end. Among the most enlightened nations of heathen antiquity, just revenge, as they called it, was not deemed criminal nor dishonourable: whilst the easiness with which divorces were obtained is a proof that neither among them, nor even among the ancient Jews, was the marriage-contract deemed indissoluble. That any man has a natural right, resulting from his immediate relations to God and to his fellow-creatures, -to accumulate property beyond what is necessary to his own comfort, and to dispose of that property at his death, has, I think, never been pretended; and yet we know by experience that nothing contributes more to produce general happiness than

the maintenance of the right to private property, though that right is derived immediately from no other source than the law of the land. It must therefore be the will of God that private property be respected, and therefore we may conclude that such respect is a duty incumbent on man; though that duty could not, I think, prior to revelation, have been deduced from its apparent tendency to increase the sum of human happiness.

For these reasons, and many others that might be stated, you will do well to defer the study of ethics particularly, till you have made yourself acquainted with the great object of the Christian revelation, and then, I know not where you will find a better guide than Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, in which the particular duties of man, moral and political, are enforced both by reason and by Scripture, which the author justly considers as of equal authority, as both are derived from God. As a treatise of practical religion, however, the work is defective, and may be considered as a system of natural and political law, rather than of moral philosophy or practical religion; for the reasonings employed in it apply only to overt acts of virtue or vice, without taking the slightest notice of the dispositions of the agent. Even as a system of natural law it is not unexceptionable. The principles from which he deduces the nature of virtue and vice, and our obligation to practise the former, and avoid the latter, are the same with Berkeley's; but, in direct opposition to the Bishop's doctrine, he allows