members that it is a rare thing to see a Jesuit of the Dominican upinion, or a Dominican (until of late) of the Jesuit; but every order gives laws to the understanding of their novices, and they never change. He considers there is such ambiguity in words, by which all lawgivers express their meaning; that there is such abstruseness in mysteries of religion, that some things are so much too high for us, that we can not understand them rightly; and yet they are so sacred, and concerning, that men will think they are bound to look into them, as far as they can; that it is no wonder if they quickly go too far, where no understanding, if it were fitted for it, could go far enough; but in these things it will be hard not to be deceived, since our words can not rightly express those things; that there is such variety of human understandings, that men's faces differ not so much as their souls; and that if there were not so much difficulty in things, yet they could not but be variously apprehended by several men. And hereto he considers, that in twenty opinions, it may be that not one of them is true; nay, whereas Varro reckoned that among the old philosophers there were eight hundred opinions concerning the summum bonum, that yet not one of them hit the right. He sees also that in all religions, in all societies, in all families, and in all things, opinions differ; and since opinions are too often begot by passion, by passions and violence they are kept; and every man is too apt to overvalue his own opinion; and out of a desire that every man should conform his judgment to his that teaches, men are apt to be earnest in their persuasion, and overact the proposition; and from being true as he supposes, he will think it profitable; and if you warm him either with confidence or opposition, he quickly tells you it is necessary; and as he loves those that think as he does, so he is ready to hate them that do not; and then secretly from wishing evil to him, he is apt to believe evil will come to him; and that it is just it should; and by this time the opinion is troublesome, and puts other men upon their guard against it; and then while passion reigns, and reason is modest and patient, and talks not loud like a storm, victory is more regarded than truth, and men call God into the party, and his judgments are used for arguments, and the threatenings of the Scripture are snatched up in haste, and men throw arrows, firebrands, and death, and by this time all the world is in an uproar. All this, and a thousand things more the English protestants con

sidering deny not their communion to any Christian who desires it, and believes the apostles' creed, and is of the religion of the first four general councils; they hope well of all that Eve well, they receive into their bosom all truc believers of what church soever; and for them that err, they instruct them, and then leave them to their liberty, to stand or fall before their own master.”*

2. A doctrine not the less safe for being the more charitable. "Christ our Lord hath given us, amongst others, two infallible notes to know the church. My sheep, saith he, hear my voice:† and again, By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another.‡—What! shall we stand upon conjectural arguments from that which men say? We are partial to ourselves, malignant to our opposites. Let Christ be heard who be his, who not. And for the hearing of his voice-O that it might be the issue! But I see you decline it, therefore I leave it also for the present. That other is that which now I stand upon, the badge of Christ's sheep.' Not a likelihood, but a certain token whereby every man may know them by this, saith he, shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have charity one towards another.-Thanks be to God, this mark of our Saviour is in us, which you with our schismatics and other enemies want. As Solomon found the true mother by her natural affection, that chose rather to yield to her adversary's plea claiming her child, than endure that it should be cut in pieces so may it soon be found at this day whether is the true mother Ours, that faith, give her the living child and kill him not; `cr yours, that if she may not have it, is content it be killed rather than wart of her will. 'Alas!' (saith ours even of those that leave her) these be my children! I have borne them to Christ in baptism I have nourished them as I could with mine own breasts, his testaments. I would have brought them up to man's estate as their free birth and parentage deserves. Whether it be their lightness or discontent, or her enticing words and gay shows, they leave me they have found a better mother. Let them live yet, though in bondage. I shall have patience; per mit the care of them to their father; I beseech him to keep them that they do no evil. If they make their peace with him, * Dissuasive from Popery. Part IL-B. i. s. 7.-Ed.

John x. 27.-Ed.

16. xiii. 35.- Y.

I am satisfied they have not hurt me at all.' Nay,' but saith yours, 'I sit alone as queen and mistress of Christ's family, he that hath not me for his mother, can not have God for his father. Mine, therefore, are these, either horn or adopted; and if they will not be mine, they shall be none. So without expecting Christ's sentence she cuts with the temporal sword, hangs, burns, draws, those that she perceives inclined to leave her, or have left her already. So she kills with the spiritual sword those that are subject not to her, yea, thousands of souls that not only have no means so to do, but many which never so much as have heard whether there be a pope of Rome or no. Let our Solomon be judge between them, yea, judge you, Mr. Waddesworth! more seriously and maturely, not by guesses, but by the very mark of Christ, which wanting yourselves, you have unawares discovered in us: judge, I say, without passion and partiality, according to Christ's word, which is his flock, which is his church.”*

ESSAY XIII.

ON THE LAW OF NATIONS.

Πρὸς πόλεως εὐδαιμονίαν καὶ δικαιοσύνην πάντα ἰδιώτον ἔμπροσθεν τέτακ ται φύσει τούτων δὲ τὰ μὲν ἀνθρώπινα εἰς τὰ θεῖα, τὰ δὲ θεῖα εἰς τὸν ἡγεμόνα νοῦν ξύμπαντα δεῖ βλέπειν, οὐχ ὡς πρὸς ἀρετῆς τὶ μόριον, ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἐν ἀρεταῖς ἀεὶ ὑπομενοῦσαν, ὡς πρὸς νόμον τίνα νομοθετοῦντα. PLATO.

For all things that regard the well-being and justice of a state are pre-ordained and established in the nature of the individual. Of these it behooves that the merely human (the temporal and fluxional) should be referred and subordinated to the divine in man, and the divine in like manner to the Supreme Mind, so however that tl. state is not to regulate its actions by reference to any particular form and fragments of virtue, but must fix its eye on that virtue, which is the abiding spirit and (as it were) substratur in all the virtues, as on a law that is itself legislative.

IT were absurd to suppose, that individuals should be under a law of moral obligation, and yet that a million of the same in*Letter to a friend who had deserted the Church of England for that of Rome.-Ed

dividuals acting collectively or through representatives, should be exempt from all law for morality is no accident of human nature, but its essential characteristic. A being altogether without morality is either a beast or a fiend, accordingly as we conceive this want of conscience to be natural or self-produced; a mere negation of goodness, or the consequence of rebellion to it. Yet were it possible to conceive a man wholly immoral, it would remain impossible to conceive him without a moral obligation to be otherwise; and none, but a madman, will imagine that the essential qualities of any thing can be altered by its becoming part of an aggregate; that a grain of corn, for instance, shall cease to contain flour, as soon as it is part of a peck or bushel. It is, therefore, grounded in the nature of the thing, and not by a mere fiction of the mind, that wise men, who have written on the law of nations, contemplate the several states of the civilized world, as so many individuals, and equally with the latter under a moral obligation to exercise their free agency within such bounds, as render it compatible with the existence of free agency in others. We may represent to ourselves this original free agency, as a right of common, the formation of separate states as an inclosure of this common, the allotments awarded severally to the co-pro prietors as constituting national rights, and the law of nations as the common register-office of their title-deeds. But in all morality, though the principle, which is the abiding spirit of the law, remains perpetual and unaltered, even as that Supreme Reason in whom and from whom it has its being, yet the letter of the law, that is, the application of it to particular instances, and the mode of realizing it in actual practice, must be modified by the existing circumstances. What we should desire to do, the conscience alone will inform us; but how and when we are to make the attempt, and to what extent it is in our power to accomplish it, are questions for the judgment, and require an acquaintance with facts, and their bearings on each other. Thence the improvement of our judgment, and the increase of our knowledge, on all subjects included within our sphere of action, are not merely advantages recommended by prudence, but absolute duties imposed on us by conscience.

As the circumstances, then, under which men act as statesmen, are different from those under which they act as individuals, a proportionate difference must be expected in the practical rules

by which their public conduct is to be determined. Let me not be misunderstood: I speak of a difference in the practical rules, not in the moral law itself, the means of administering in particular cases, and under given circumstances, which it is the sole object of these rules to point out. The spirit continues one and the same, though it may vary its form according to the element into which it is transported. This difference, with its grounds and consequences, it is the province of the philosophical publicist to discover and display and exactly in this point (I speak with unfeigned diffidence) it appears to me that the writers on the law of nations, whose works I have had the opportunity of studying, have been least successful.

In what does the law of nations differ from the laws enacted by a particular state for its own subjects? The solution is evident. The law of nations, considered apart from the common principle of all morality, is not fixed or positive in itself, nor supplied with any regular means of being enforced. Like those duties in private life which, for the same reasons, moralists have entitled imperfect duties (though the most atrocious guilt may be involved in the omission or violation of them), the law of nations appeals only to the conscience and prudence of the parties concerned. Wherein then does it differ from the moral laws which the reason, considered as conscience, dictates for the conduct of individuals? This is a more difficult question; but my answer would be determined by, and grounded on, the obvious differences of the circumstances in the two cases. Remember then, that we are now reasoning, not as sophists or system-mongers, but as men anxious to discover what is right in order that we may practise it, or at least give our suffrage and the influence of our opinion in recommending its practice. We must therefore confine the question to those cases, in which honest men and real

* Grotius, Bynkerschoek, Puffendorf, Wolfe, and Vattel; to whose works I must add, as comprising whatever is most valuable in the preceding authors, with many important improvements and additions, Robinson's Re ports of Cases in the Admiralty Court, under Sir W. Scott: to whom international law is under no less obligation than the law of commercial proceeding was to the late Lord Mansfield. As I have never seen Sir W. Scott, nor either by myself or my connections enjoy the honor of the remotest acquaintance with him, I trust that even by those who may think my opin ion erroneous, I shall not at least be suspected of intentional flattery.