to the overturning of all morality. Moral
laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires, which
they cannot be but by rewards and punishments that will overbalance the
satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the law.
If, therefore, anything be imprinted on the minds of all men as a law,
all men must have a certain and unavoidable knowledge that certain and
unavoidable punishment will attend the breach of it. For if men can be
ignorant or doubtful of what is innate, innate principles are insisted
on, and urged to no purpose; truth and certainty (the things pretended)
are not at all secured by them; but men are in the same uncertain
floating estate with as without them. An evident indubitable knowledge
of unavoidable punishment, great enough to make the transgression very
uneligible, must accompany an innate law; unless with an innate law they
can suppose an innate Gospel too. I would not here be mistaken, as if,
because I deny an innate law I thought there were none but positive
laws. There is a great deal of difference between an innate law, and a
law of nature between something imprinted on our minds in their very
original, and something that we, being ignorant of, may attain to the
knowledge of, by the use and due application of our natural faculties.
And I think they equally forsake the truth who, running into contrary
extremes, either affirm an innate law, or deny that there is a law
knowable by the light of nature, i.e. without the help of positive
revelation.

14. Those who maintain innate practical Principles tell us not what they
are.

The difference there is amongst men in their practical principles is
so evident that I think I need say no more to evince, that it will
be impossible to find any innate moral rules by this mark of general
assent; and it is enough to make one suspect that the supposition of
such innate principles is but an opinion taken up at pleasure; since
those who talk so confidently of them are so sparing to tell us WHICH
THEY ARE. This might with justice be expected from those men who lay
stress upon this opinion; and it gives occasion to distrust either their
knowledge or charity, who, declaring that God has imprinted on the minds
of men the foundations of knowledge and the rules of living, are yet so
little favourable to the information of their neighbours, or the quiet
of mankind, as not to point out to them which they are, in the variety
men a