"to comprehend the whole system of things; LECT. III. "and who allots to our humbler faculties and "affections those partial objects which alone they are able to comprehend; giving us still, however, the noble privilege

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"Our partial movement with the master-wheel
"Of the great world, and serve that sacred end,
"Which he, the unerring Reason, keeps in view.'"*

-That man, like all the other creatures of God,
has subserved the "sacred end" that is kept in
view by the infinite and "unerring Reason," it
were impious to question. But, alas! how has
this been? Not by a voluntary and holy
co-operation of the subject creature with the
supreme and rightful Governor; but by that
Governor's having, in wisdom and love, availed
himself of the apostasy of the creature, to pre-
sent to the wondering universe a manifestation,
the most stupendous in glory and delightful in
interest, of his own all-perfect character; thus
promoting the great purposes of his moral go-
vernment, and rearing on the ruins of human
nature a magnificent temple to his praise;—a
Temple, towards which, for aught we can tell,
the eyes of an intelligent universe may look in
their adorations, just as from all countries of the
world through which they were scattered, the
eyes of the chosen people of Israel were turned
towards the Sanctuary of Jehovah at Jerusalem.
* Lecture LXXVII.

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LECT. III.

RADICAL ERROR OF MORAL SYSTEMS.

It is my intention to devote the next Lecture to an examination of the moral system of Bishop Butler, assigning at the same time my reasons for so doing:-after which our way will be clear for the more direct discussion of what we conceive to be the truth on the interesting questions at issue.

LECTURE IV.

THE MORAL SYSTEM OF BISHOP BUTLER.

ROM. II. 14.

For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law; these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.

RESPECTING the various theories which, in LECT. IV. former Lectures, we have had under our brief review, it has been my object to show you, that they are all chargeable with the twofold fallacy mentioned at the outset of my strictures, and are all alike vitiated by it;-namely, that in each one of them, the human nature is assumed as the standard by which virtue is to be estimated, and man, the possessor of that nature, as the judge by whom the estimate is to be made: while, if man is a fallen and morally depraved creature, the standard is fallacious, and the judge incompetent; the source of the information deceptive, and the theorist who uses it himself a subject of the deceptive influence.-Yet even by philosophical divines, justly esteemed evangelical,

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LECT. IV. there has at times been discovered rather more than enough of a disposition to give in to such modes of reasoning;-to forget and overlook the grand fact of man's degeneracy, or at least while they are framing from the human nature their moral theories, to mitigate its extent, and soften down its virulence. With how much of explanation, for example, must such a statement as the following be taken (and yet it is comparatively a moderate one) to bring it to clear and full congruity with the Bible account of man : "We approve or disapprove of actions, not because of their tendency to happiness or the contrary, but in consequence of the moral "constitution of our nature; which constitution, "as God is its Author, we are to regard as furnishing the expression of his will. He who "has formed us in his own image, has not "rendered it necessary for us to observe rela"tions and to estimate tendencies and effects,

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previously to our approving of an action as

right, or our disapproving of it as wrong: and, 'being conscious that we love virtue and hate "vice without reference to consequences, merely "because they are virtue and vice, we justly "infer, that it is not on account of their consequences that virtue is lovely and vice hateful, "that the one produces the emotions of approba"tion and the other of disapprobation.”—There is a sense, and there is a measure, in which all this is true but, both in the phraseology and in

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the principles of the statement, there seems to me LECT. IV. to be more of the professorial chair than of the evangelical pulpit,-more of the human nature that is eulogized by philosophers, than of the human nature that is depicted and deplored by prophets and apostles.-Would not one suppose, were we not otherwise aware of the author's sentiments, that the nature of which he thus writes retained the image in which it was formed, and was still characterised by a native love of goodness for its own sake, and a corresponding hatred of all that is evil?

Bishop But

As a fuller exemplification of the systems of 9. System of philosophical theologians, I have selected, for ler. illustration and comment in the present Lecture, that of the justly celebrated BISHOP BUTLER; a man to whose penetration, and learning, and argumentative sagacity, Christianity is under such deep and lasting obligation. In his Analogy" he has shown, with admirable skill, that the God of nature and of providence is the same as the God of revelation; and that the principle of the objections, urged by infidels against the latter, holds with equal force against all the intimations of Deity given by the two former;-so that not only would such objections, if valid in opposition to the authority of the Scriptures, be equally subversive of whatever passes under the designation of natural religion, or of pure theism,-but that the identity. of the characteristics of the divine procedure,