concerning the nature of virtue, free-will, fate, grace, and predeftination, the debates of ages, and matter of innumerable folio's. To attempt this, therefore, in the compass of a letter would be the highest prefumption, did not I well know the clear and ready comprehenfion of the perfon to whom it is addreffed; and alfo that the most difficult of thefe kinds of difquifitions are ufually better explained in a few lines, than by a thousand pages.

In order, therefore, to find out the true origin of moral evil, it will be neceffary, in the first place, to enquire into its nature and effence; or what it is that constitutes one action evil, and another good. Various have been the opinions of various authors on this criterion of virtue; and this variety has rendered that doubtful, which must otherwise have been clear and manifeft to the meanest capacity. Some indeed have denied that there is any fuch thing, because different ages and nations have entertained different fentiments concerning it: but this is just as reasonable

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reasonable as to affert, that there are neither fun, moon, or ftars, because astronomers have fupported different systems of the motions and magnitudes of these celestial bodies. Some have placed it in conformity to truth, fome to the fitness of things, and others to the will of God. But all this is merely fuperficial: they resolve us not why truth, or the fitness of things, are either eligible or obligatory, or why God should require us to act in one manner rather than another. The true reason of which can possibly be no other than this, because fome actions produce happiness, and others mifery; fo that all moral good and evil are nothing more than the production of the natural. This alone it is that makes truth preferable to falfhood, this that determines the fitness of things, and this that induces God to command fome actions and forbid others. They who extol the truth, beauty, and harmony of virtue, exclufive of its confequences, deal but in pompous nonsense; and they who would perfuade us, that good and evil are things G 2 indifferent,

indifferent, depending wholly on the will of God, do but confound the nature of things, as well as all our notions of God himself, by representing him capable of willing contradictions; that is, that we should be, and be happy, and at the fame time that we should torment and destroy each other; for injuries cannot be made benefits, pain cannot be made pleasure, and confequently vice cannot be made virtue by any power whatever. It is the confequences therefore of all human actions that must stamp their value. So far as the general practice of any action tends to produce good, and introduce happiness into the world, fo far we may pronounce it virtuous; fo much evil as it occafions, fuch is the degree of vice it contains. I fay the general practice, because we must always remember, in judging by this rule, to apply it only to the general species of actions, and not to particular actions; for the infinite wisdom of God, defirous to fet bounds to the deftructive confequences which muft otherwise have followed from the univerfal

univerfal depravity of mankind, has fo wonderfully contrived the nature of things, that our most vitious actions may fometimes accidentally and collaterally produce good. Thus, for instance, robbery may disperse useless hoards to the benefit of the public; adultery may bring heirs, and good-humour too, into many families, where they would otherwise have been wanting; and murder free the world from tyrants and oppreffors. Luxury maintains its thousands, and vanity its ten thousands.. Superftition and arbitrary power contribute to the grandeur of many nations, and the liberties of others are preserved by the perpetual contentions of avarice, knavery, selfishness, and ambition : and thus the worst of vices, and the worst of men, are often compelled by providence to ferve the most beneficial purposes, contrary to their own malevolent tendencies and inclinations; and thus private vices become public benefits by the force only of accidental circumstances. But this impeaches not the truth of the criterion of virtue before mentioned,

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tioned, the only folid foundation on which any true system of ethicks can be built, the only plain, fimple, and uniform rule by which we can país any judgment on our actions; but by this we may be enabled, not only to determine which are good and which are evil, but almost mathematically to demonstrate the proportion of virtue or vice which belongs to each, by comparing them with the degrees of happiness or mifery which they occafion. But though the production of happiness is the effence of virtue, it is by no means the end: the great end is the probation of mankind, or the giving them an opportunity of exalting or degrading themfelves in another state by their behaviour in the prefent. And thus indeed it answers two most important purposes; those are, the confervation of our happiness and the test of our obedience; for had not such a test seemed neceffary to God's infinite wisdom, and productive of universal good, he would never have permitted the happiness of men, even in this life, to have depended