rinciple must needs be, and not need any proof to ascertain its
truth, nor want any reason to gain it approbation. He would be thought
void of common sense who asked on the one side, or on the other side
went to give a reason WHY "it is impossible for the same thing to be and
not to be." It carries its own light and evidence with it, and needs no
other proof: he that understands the terms assents to it for its own
sake or else nothing will ever be able to prevail with him to do it. But
should that most unshaken rule of morality and foundation of all social
virtue, "That should do as he would be done unto," be proposed to one
who never heard of it before, but yet is of capacity to understand its
meaning; might he not without any absurdity ask a reason why? And were
not he that proposed it bound to make out the truth and reasonableness
of it to him? Which plainly shows it not to be innate; for if it were it
could neither want nor receive any proof; but must needs (at least
as soon as heard and understood) be received and assented to as an
unquestionable truth, which a man can by no means doubt of. So that
the truth of all these moral rules plainly depends upon some other
antecedent to them, and from which they must be DEDUCED; which could not
be if either they were innate or so much as self-evident.

5. Instance in keeping Compacts

That men should keep their compacts is certainly a great and undeniable
rule in morality. But yet, if a Christian, who has the view of happiness
and misery in another life, be asked why a man must keep his word, he
will give this as a reason:--Because God, who has the power of eternal
life and death, requires it of us. But if a Hobbist be asked why? he
will answer:--Because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will
punish you if you do not. And if one of the old philosophers had been
asked, he would have answered:--Because it was dishonest, below the
dignity of a man, and opposite to virtue, the highest perfection of
human nature, to do otherwise.

6. Virtue generally approved not because innate, but because profitable.

Hence naturally flows the great variety of opinions concerning moral
rules which are to be found among men, according to the different sorts
of happiness they have a prospect of, or propose to themselves; which
could not be if practical principles were innate, and imprinted in our
minds immediately by the hand of God. I grant the existence of God is
so many ways ma