truth. They lie not open
as natural characters engraved on the mind; which, if any such were,
they must needs be visible by themselves, and by their own light be
certain and known to everybody. But this is no derogation to their truth
and certainty; no more than it is to the truth or certainty of the three
angles of a triangle being equal to two right ones because it is not so
evident as "the whole is bigger than a part," nor so apt to be assented
to at first hearing. It may suffice that these moral rules are capable
of demonstration: and therefore it is our own faults if we come not to
a certain knowledge of them. But the ignorance wherein many men are of
them, and the slowness of assent wherewith others receive them, are
manifest proofs that they are not innate, and such as offer themselves
to their view without searching.

2. Faith and Justice not owned as Principles by all Men.

Whether there be any such moral principles, wherein all men do agree, I
appeal to any who have been but moderately conversant in the history of
mankind, and looked abroad beyond the smoke of their own chimneys. Where
is that practical truth that is universally received, without doubt or
question, as it must be if innate? JUSTICE, and keeping of contracts,
is that which most men seem to agree in. This is a principle which is
thought to extend itself to the dens of thieves, and the confederacies
of the greatest villains; and they who have gone furthest towards the
putting off of humanity itself, keep faith and rules of justice one with
another. I grant that outlaws themselves do this one amongst another:
but it is without receiving these as the innate laws of nature. They
practise them as rules of convenience within their own communities: but
it is impossible to conceive that he embraces justice as a practical
principle who acts fairly with his fellow-highwayman, and at the same
time plunders or kills the next honest man he meets with Justice and
truth are the common ties of society; and therefore even outlaws and
robbers, who break with all the world besides, must keep faith and rules
of equity amongst themselves; or else they cannot hold together. But
will any one say, that those that live by fraud or rapine have innate
principles of truth and justice which they allow and assent to?

3. Objection: though Men deny them in their Practice, yet they admit
them in their Thoughts answered.

Perhaps it will be urged, that the tacit assent of