lose it--so reason, several appetites, passions, and affections,
prevailing in different degrees of strength, is not THAT idea or
notion of HUMAN NATURE; but THAT NATURE consists in these several
principles considered as having a natural respect to each other, in
the several passions being naturally subordinate to the one superior
principle of reflection or conscience. Every bias, instinct,
propension within, is a natural part of our nature, but not the
whole: add to these the superior faculty whose office it is to
adjust, manage, and preside over them, and take in this its natural
superiority, and you complete the idea of human nature. And as in
civil government the constitution is broken in upon and violated by
power and strength prevailing over authority; so the constitution of
man is broken in upon and violated by the lower faculties or
principles within prevailing over that which is in its nature
supreme over them all. Thus, when it is said by ancient writers
that tortures and death are not so contrary to human nature as
injustice, by this, to be sure, is not meant that the aversion to
the former in mankind is less strong and prevalent than their
aversion to the latter, but that the former is only contrary to our
nature considered in a partial view, and which takes in only the
lowest part of it, that which we have in common with the brutes;
whereas the latter is contrary to our nature, considered in a higher
sense, as a system and constitution contrary to the whole economy of
man. {7}

And from all these things put together, nothing can be more evident
than that, exclusive of revelation, man cannot be considered as a
creature left by his Maker to act at random, and live at large up to
the extent of his natural power, as passion, humour, wilfulness,
happen to carry him, which is the condition brute creatures are in;