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Morality
4. Morality. The controversy about the morality of the
Sabbath, or the sanctity of the first day of the week, is founded on the
great stress put upon the word “morality,” and the arbitrary distinction
that is made between moral duties and other duties. As much as if the
morality of a duty were something given by God to us as a mark to know
duties that are lasting from those that are but temporary, whereas
morality is nothing but a mixed mode or idea, composed according to the
will and pleasure of man, drawn only from a minute circumstance of a
duty. If we consider actions without circumstances — and there is no
action that is either moral or immoral but considers things with their
circumstances — every duty whatsoever is a moral duty. A duty that the
light of nature teaches is a duty of eternal reason, as much as any duty
whatever. Thus the action of killing of a man is no wise a moral evil
abstracted from its circumstances. And the action of circumcision is a
moral good, and what the light of nature teaches us, and a duty of
eternal reason, considered with its circumstances — considered with the
circumstances that God has commanded it. For the light of nature teaches
us as much that we ought to obey God as that we ought not to do the
greatest injury of our fellow creatures from revenge and malice. And
there is as much natural reason for the one as for the other.
Circumcision is nonetheless a duty of eternal reason because it is a
duty at one time and not another, any more than brothers and sisters
marrying together is not an immorality of eternal reason because it is a
sin at one time and not another. There is no need to wonder why the
command for the observation of the Sabbath is put into the decalogue,
because of which men call it the moral law; neither is there any reason
to question whether baptism and the Lord’s Supper are to be observed
because men say, “Nothing but what is moral is duty under the gospel.”
O, how is the world darkened, clouded, distracted, and torn to pieces by
those dreadful enemies of mankind called words!
80. Morality. Vid. M 4. Only there is this difference,
the morality of some duties is more immediate and direct than others;
and even of those duties which are commonly called moral, there is a
difference, so there are gradual steps from the most immediate to the
most indirect.
1123.
Moral Virtue. Moral virtue does not primarily and summarily
consist in truth. For if it were so, love could not properly be said to
be the sum of all the moral commands of God and of all moral duties.
Then all moral virtues could not be ultimately resolved into love as
their common fountain and summary comprehension: particularly the
virtues of veracity and justice, and those commands of God that require
us to speak the truth to our neighbors, and that require human judges to
judge justly and according to truth, could not be properly resolved into
the law of loving our neighbor as a general law that properly
comprehends it, in the ground and reason of it. The virtue of love
cannot [i.e., could not] be the comprehension and fountain and
reason of those virtues. On the contrary, the love of truth is [i.e.,
would be] rather the sum and fountain and ground of the law of love. The
great command of love does not stand in the place of the root and stock,
and the law of truth in the place of branches from this general or
common root. But, on the contrary, the law of truth is more general and
original and stands in the place of the root, and the law of love is one
of the branches from that root or common stock. Such is the case with
moral virtues and duties, that general duties and rules contain the
ground of particular duties that are, as it were, branches of the
general. In particular, that general rule of doing justly implies the
ground and reason of a great many particular duties and rules. As for
instance, it is the duty of a man to pay his debts because that is to do
justly. It is the duty of a judge to acquit the innocent and condemn him
who is evidently guilty because that is to do justly, etc. And if this,
therefore, were the case of all moral rules whatsoever with regard to
truth — that all are summarily to be resolved into the law of truth as
the most general law, comprehending all the rest — then this law or rule
of acting according to truth would contain in it the reason of all other
laws, and even the law of loving God and our neighbors. The reason why
we ought to love God and our neighbors would be this: that we ought to
act according to truth. And if so, the laws of speaking and acting
according to truth, that forbid lying, etc., could not properly be
represented as branches of the general law of love. And, this would not
be the reason why we ought to speak and act according to truth — that we
ought to speak and act according to love — but on the contrary, the
reason why we ought to speak and act according to love would be this —
that we ought to speak and act according to truth.
1168.
Title to a Treatise. The nature of true virtue, and the way in
which it is obtained. |
