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

THUS has God established and ordered, that this principle of natural conscience, which though it implies no such thing as actual benevolence to Being in general, nor any delight in such a principle, simply considered, and so implies no truly spiritual sense or virtuous taste, yet should approve and condemn the same things that are approved and condemned by a spiritual sense or virtuous taste.

THUS has God established and ordered, that this principle of natural conscience, which though it implies no such thing as actual benevolence to Being in general, nor any delight in such a principle, simply consider'd, and so implies no truly spiritual sense or virtuous taste, yet should approve and condemn the same things that are approved and condemned by a spiritual sense or virtuous taste.

THAT moral sense which is natural to mankind, so far as it is disinterested, and not founded in association of ideas, is the same with this natural conscience that has been described. The sense of moral good and evil, and that disposition to approve virtue, and disapprove vice, which men have by natural conscience, is that moral sense, so much insisted on in the writings of many of late: a misunderstanding of which seems to have been the thing that has misled those moralists who have insisted on a disinterested moral sense, universal in the world of mankind, as an evidence of a disposition to true virtue, consisting in a benevolent temper, naturally implanted in the minds of all men. Some of the arguments made use of by these writers, do indeed prove that there is a moral sense or taste, universal among men, distinct from what arises from self-love. Though I humbly conceive, there is some confusion in their discourses on the subject, and not a proper distinction observed in the instances of men's approbation of virtue, which they produce. Some of which are not to their purpose, being instances of that approbation of virtue, that was described, which arises from self-love. But other ⟨p. 166⟩instances prove that there is a moral taste, or sense of moral good and evil, natural to all, which don't properly arise from self-love Yet […] conceive there are no instances of this kind which may no be referred to natural conscience, and particularly to that which I have observed to be primary in the approbation of natural conscience, viz. a sense of desert and approbation o that natural agreement there is, […] manner and measure, in justice. But I think it is plain from what has been said, that neither this, not any thing else wherein consists the sense of moral good and even which there is in natural conscience, is of the nature of a truly virtuous taste, or determination of mind to relish and delight in the essena beauty of true virtue, arising from a virtuous benevolence of heart.