this, a man can never be certain that anything is his duty. Ignorance
or doubt of the law, hopes to escape the knowledge or power of the
law-maker, or the like, may make men give way to a present appetite;
but let any one see the fault, and the rod by it, and with the
transgression, a fire ready to punish it; a pleasure tempting, and the
hand of the Almighty visibly held up and prepared to take vengeance,
(for this must be the case where any duty is imprinted on the mind,) and
then tell me whether it be possible for people with such a prospect,
such a certain knowledge as this, wantonly, and without scruple,
to offend against a law which they carry about them in indelible
characters, and that stares them in the face whilst they are breaking
it? Whether men, at the same time that they feel in themselves the
imprinted edicts of an Omnipotent Law-maker, can, with assurance and
gaiety, slight and trample underfoot his most sacred injunctions? And
lastly, whether it be possible that whilst a man thus openly bids
defiance to this innate law and supreme Lawgiver, all the bystanders,
yea, even the governors and rulers of the people, full of the same
sense both of the law and Law-maker, should silently connive, without
testifying their dislike or laying the least blame on it? Principles of
actions indeed there are lodged in men's appetites; but these are so far
from being innate moral principles, that if they were left to their full
swing they would carry men 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)