appetites of nature, "to be like God, and to have another like himself." This appetite God only made regular by his first provisions of satisfaction. He gave to man a woman for a wife, for the companion of his sorrows, for the instrument of multiplication; and yet provided him but of one, and intimated he should have no more: which we do not only know by an after revelation, the holy Jesus having declared it to have been God's purpose; but Adam himself understood it, as appears by his first discourses at the entertainment of his new bride. And although there were permissions afterward of polygamy, yet there might have been a greater pretence of necessity at first, because of enlarging and multiplying fountains rather than channels; and three or four at first would have enlarged mankind by greater proportion than many more afterwards; little distances near the centre make greater and larger figures, than when they part near the fringes of the circle; and therefore those after permissions were to avoid a greater evil, not a hallowing of the license, but a reproach of their infirmity. And certainly the multiplication of wives is contrariant to that design of love and endearment, which God intended at first between man and wife. Connubia mille, Non illis generis nexus, non pignora curæ, And amongst them that have many wivesk, the relation and necessitude is trifling and loose, and they are all equally contemptible; because the mind entertains no loves or union where the object is multiplied, and the act unfixed and distracted. So that this having a great commodity in order to man's great end, that is, of living well and happily, seems to be intended by God in the nature of things and instruments natural and reasonable towards man's end; and therefore to be a law, if not natural, yet at least positive and superinduced at first, in order to man's proper end. However, by the provision which God made for satisfaction of h Gen. ii. 24. Sallust. Jugurth. c. lxxx. i Claudian. Bell. Gildon. 441. -οὐδὲ γὰρ καλὸν, Δυοῖν γυναικοῖν ἄνδρ' ἕν ̓ ἡνίας ἔχειν ̓Αλλ' εἰς μίαν βλέποντες ευναίαν κύπριν Στέργουσιν, ὅστις μὴ κακῶς οἰκεῖν θέλει.--Eurip. Αndrom. 179. this appetite of nature, all those actions, which deflect and err from the order of this end, are unnatural and inordinate, and not permitted by the concession of God, nor the order of the thing; but such actions only, which naturally produce the end of this provision and satisfaction, are natural, regular, and good. 9. But by this means man grew into a society and a family, and having productions of his own kind, which he naturally desired, and therefore loved, he was consequently obliged to assist them in order to their end, that they might become like him, that is, perfect men, and brought up to the same state: and they also by being at first impotent, and for ever after beneficiaries' and obliged persons, are for the present subject to their parents, and for ever after bound to duty; because there is nothing which they can do, that can directly produce so great a benefit to the parents as they have to the children. From hence naturally descend all those mutual obligations between parents and children, which are instruments of protection and benefit on the one side, and duty and obedience on the other; and all these to be expressed according as either of their necessities shall require, or any stipulation or contract shall appoint, or shall be superinduced by any positive laws of God or man. 10. In natural descent of the generations of man this. one first family was multiplied so much, that for conveniency they were forced to divide their dwellings; and this they did by families especially, the great father being the major-domo to all his minors. And this division of dwellings, although it kept the same form and power in the several families, which were in the original, yet it introduced some new necessities, which, although they varied in the instance, yet were to be determined by such instruments of reason, which were given to us at first upon foresight of the public necessities of the world. And when the families came to be divided, that their common parent being extinct, no master of a family had power over another master; the rights of such men and their natural power became equal, because there was nothing to distinguish them, and because they 1 Nihil enim est liberis proprimin, quod non parentum sit priùs, qui aut de suo dederant, aut acquirendi præbuerant causas.— Philo. might do equal injury, and invade each other's possessions, and disturb their peace, and surprise their liberty. And so also was their power of doing benefit equal, though not the same in kind. But God, who made man a sociable creature, because he knew it was "not good for him to be alone," so dispensed the abilities and possibilities of doing good, that in something or other every man might need or be benefited by every man". Therefore, that they might pursue the end of nature, and their own appetites of living well and happily, they were forced to consent to such contracts, which might secure and supply to every one those good things, without which he could not live happily. Both the appetites, the irascible and the concupiscible, fear of evil, and desire of benefit, were the sufficient endearments of contracts, of societies, and republics. And upon this stock were decreed and hallowed all those propositions, without which bodies politic and societies of men cannot be happy". And in the transaction of these, many accidents daily happening, it grew still reasonable, that is, necessary to the end of living happily, that all those after obligations should be observed with the proportion of the same faith and endearment which bound the first contracts. For though the natural law be always the same, yet some parts of it are primely necessary, others by supposition and accident; and both are of the same necessity, that is, equally necessary in the several cases. Thus, to obey a king is as necessary and naturally reasonable as to obey a father, that is, supposing there be a king, as it is certain naturally a man cannot be, but a father must be supposed. If it be made necessary that I promise, it is also necessary that I perform it; for else I shall return to that inconvenience, which I sought to avoid when I made the promise; and though the instance be very far removed from the first necessities and accidents of our prime being and production, yet the reason still pursues us, and natural reason reaches up to the very last minutes, and orders the most remote particulars of our well-being. 11. Thus, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to kill, are very reasonable prosecutions of the great end of nature, m Animus inveniet liberalitatis materiam, etiam inter angustias paupertatis. Senec. de Benefic. c. i. n Commoda præterea patriæ tibi prima putare.- Lucilius. of living well and happily; but when a man is said to steal, when to be a murderer, when to be incestuous, the natural law doth not teach in all cases; but when the superinduced constitution hath determined the particular law, by natural reason we are obliged to observe it: because, though the civil power makes the instance, and determines the particular; yet right reason makes the sanction, and passes the obligation. The law of nature makes the major proposition; but the civil constitution, or any superinduced law, makes the assumption in a practical syllogism. To kill is not murder; but to kill such persons, whom I ought not. It was not murder, among the Jews, to kill a manslayer, before he entered a city of refuge; to kill the same man after his entry, was. Among the Romans, to kill an adulteress or a ravisher in the act, was lawful; with us, it is murder. Murder, and incest, and theft, always were unlawful; but the same actions were not always the same crimes. And it is just with these, as with disobedience, which was ever criminal; but the same thing was not estimated to be disobedience ; nor indeed could any thing be so, till the sanction of a superior had given the instance of obedience. So for theft: to catch fish in rivers, or deer, or pigeons, when they were esteemed feræ naturæ, of a wild condition, and so primò occupantis, was lawful; just as to take or kill badgers or foxes, and beavers and lions: but when the laws had appropriated rivers, and divided shores, and imparked deer, and housed pigeons, it became theft to take them without leave. To despoil the Egyptians was not theft, when God, who is the Lord of all possessions, had bidden the Israelites; but to do so now, were the breach of the natural law, and of a divine commandment. For the natural law, I said, is eternal in the sanction, but variable in the instance and the expression. And indeed the laws of nature are very few; they were but two at first, and but two at last, when the great change was made from families to kingdoms. The first is, to do duty to God; the second is, to do to ourselves and our neighbours, that is, to our neighbours as to ourselves, all those actions, which naturally, reasonably, or by institution or emergent necessity, are in order to a happy life, Our ་ན blessed Saviour reduces all the law to these two: 1. Love. the Lord with all thy heart: 2. Love thy neighbour as thyself. In which I observe, in verification of my former discourse, that love is the first natural bond of duty to God, and so also it is to our neighbour. And therefore all intercourse with our neighbour was founded in, and derived from, the two greatest endearments of love in the world. A man came to have a neighbour, by being a husband and a father. 12. So that still there are but two great natural laws, binding us in our relations to God and man; we remaining essentially, and, by the very design of creation, obliged to God in all, and to our neighbours in the proportions of equality, as thyself; that is, that he be permitted and promoted, in the order to his living well and happily, as thou art: for love being there not an affection, but the duty that results from the first natural bands of love, which began neighbourhood, signifies justice, equality, and such reasonable proceedings, which are in order to our common end of a happy life; and is the same with that other, "Whatsoever ye would, that men should do to you, do you to them ;" and that is certainly the greatest and most effective love; because it best promotes that excellent end, which God designed for our natural perfection. All other particulars are but prosecutions of these two, that is, of the order of nature: save only that there is a third law, which is a part of love too; it is self-love; and therefore is rather supposed, than at the first expressed, because a man is reasonably to be presumed to have in him a sufficient stock of self-love, to serve the ends of his nature and creation; and that is, that man demean and use his own body in that decorum, which is most orderly and proportionate to his perfective end of a happy life; which Christian religion calls sobriety; and it is a prohibition of those uncharitable, self-destroying sins of drunkenness, gluttony, and inordinate and unreasonable manners of lust, destructive of nature's intendments, or at least no ways promoting them. For it is naturally lawful to satisfy any of these desires, when the desire does not carry the satisfaction beyond the design of nature, that is, to the violation of P Num. 4. |