Two dissertations, I. Concerning the end for which God created the world. II. The…

INDEED most of the duties incumbent on us, if well considered, will be found to partake of the nature of justice. There is some natural agreement of one thing to another; some adaptedness of the agent to the object; some answerableness of the act to the occasion; some equality and proportion in things of a similar nature, and of a direct relation one to another. So it is in relative duties; duties of children to parents, and of parents to children; duties of husbands and wives; duties of rulers and subjects; duties of friendship and good neighbourhood: and all duties that we owe to God, our creator, preserver, and benefactor; and ⟨p. 142⟩all duties whatsoever, considered as required by God, and as branches of our duty to him, and also considered as what are to be performed with a regard to Christ, as acts of obedience to his precepts, and as testimonies of respect to him, and of our regard to what he has done for us, the virtues and temper of mind he has exercised towards us, and the benefits we have or hope for therefrom.

IT is this secondary kind of beauty, which belongs to the virtues and duties required of us, that Mr. Wollaston seems to have had in his eye, when he resolved all virtue into an agreement of inclinations, volitions and actions with truth. He evidently has respect to the justice there is in the virtues and duties that are proper to be in one Being towards another; which consists in one Being's expressing such affections and using such a conduct towards another, as hath a natural ag•erment and proportion to what is in them, and what we receive from them: which is as much a natural conformity of affection and action with its ground, object and occasion, as that which is between a true proposition and the thing spoken of in it.

BUT there is another and higher beauty in true virtue, and in all truly virtuous dispositions and exercises, than what consists in any uniformity or similarity of various things; viz. the union of heart to Being in general, or to GOD the Being of Beings, which appears in those virtues; and which those virtues, when true, are the various expressions or effects of. Benevolence to Being in general, or to Being simply considered, is entirely a distinct thing from uniformity in the midst of variety, and is a superior kind of beauty.