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 manifest, and the obedience we owe him so congruous to the
light of reason, that a great part of mankind give testimony to the law
of nature: but yet I think it must be allowed that several moral rules
may receive from mankind a very general approbation, without either
knowing or admitting the true ground of morality; which can only be the
will and law of a God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hand rewards
and punishments, and power enough to call to account the proudest
offender. For, God having, by an inseparable connexion, joined virtue
and public happiness together, and made the practice thereof necessary