N07809:465
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 has also been observed, how that virtue, consisting in benevolence, is approved, and vice, consisting in ill-will, is disliked, from the influence of self-love, together with association of ideas, in the same manner as men dislike those qualities in things without life or reason, with which they have always connected the ideas of hurtfulness, malignancy, perniciousness; but like those things with which they habitually connect the ideas of profit, pleasantness, comfortableness, &c. This sort of approbation or liking of virtue, and dislike of vice, is easily mistaken for true virtue, not only because those things are approved by it that have the ⟨p. 180⟩nature of virtue, and the things disliked have the nature of vice, but because here is much of resemblance of virtuous approbation, it being complacence from love; the difference only lying in this, that it is not from love to Being in general, but from self-love.
THERE is also, as has been shown, a liking of some virtues, and dislike of some vices, from the influence of the natural instinct of pity. This men are apt to mistake for the exercise of true virtue, on many accounts. Here is not only a kind of complacence, and the objects of complacence are what have the nature of virtue, and the virtues indeed very amiable, such as humanity, mercy, tenderness of heart, &c. and the contrary very odious; but besides, the approbation is not merely from self-love, but from compassion, an affection that respects others, and resembles benevolence, as has been shown.
THERE is also, as has been shewn, a liking of some virtues, and dislike of some vices, from the influence of the natural instinct of pity. This men are apt to mistake for the exercise of true virtue, on many accounts. Here is not only a kind of complacence, and the objects of complacence are what have the nature of virtue, and the virtues indeed very amiable, such as humanity, mercy, tenderness of heart, &c. and the contrary very odious; but besides, the approbation is not meerly from self-love, but from compassion, an affection that respects others, and resembles benevolence, as has been shewn.