N07809:375
Two dissertations, I. Concerning the end for which God created the world. II. The…
Two dissertations, I. Concerning the end for which God created the world. II. The nature of true virtue. / by the late Reverend, learned and pious Jonathan Edwards, A.M. president of the College in New-Jersey.
Boston: printed by S. Kneeland, 1765
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
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.
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 intirely a distinct thing from uniformity in the midst of variety, and is a superior kind of beauty.
'TIS true, that benevolence to Being in general, when a person hath it, will naturally incline him to justice, or proportion in the exercises of it. He that loves Being, simply considered, will naturally (as was observed before) other things being equal, love particular Beings, in a proportion compounded of the degree of Being, & the degree of virtue or benevolence to Being, which they have. And that is to love Beings in proportion to their dignity. For the dignity of any Being consists in those two things. Respect to