[883] Prolegomena, sect. 9.
[884] Sect. 12.
16. This scheme, he observes, may at first sight want the two requisites of a law, a legislator, and a sanction. But whatever is naturally assented to by our minds, must spring from the author of nature. God is proved to be the author of every proposition which is proved to be true by the constitution of nature, which has him for its author.[885] Nor is a sanction wanting in the rewards, that is the happiness which attends the observance of the law of nature, and in the opposite effects of its neglect; and in a lax sense, though not that of the jurists, reward as well as punishment may be included in the word sanction.[886] But benevolence, that is love and desire of good towards all rational beings, includes piety towards God, the greatest of them all, as well as humanity.[887] Cumberland altogether abstains from arguments founded on revelation, and is perhaps the first writer on natural law who has done so, for they may even be found in Hobbes. And I think that he may be reckoned the founder of what is awkwardly and invidiously called the utilitarian school; for though similar expressions about the common good may sometimes be found in the ancients, it does not seem to have been the basis of any ethical system.
[885] Sect. 13.
[886] Sect. 14.
[887] Sect. 15.
17. This common good, not any minute particle of it, as the benefit of a single man, is the great end of the legislator and of him who obeys his will. And such human actions as by their natural tendency promote the common good may be called naturally good, more than those which tend only to the good of any one man, by how much the whole is greater than this small part. And whatever is directed in the shortest way to this end may be called right, as a right line is the shortest of all. And as the whole system of the universe, when all things are arranged so as to produce happiness, is beautiful, being aptly disposed to its end, which is the definition of beauty, so particular actions contributing to this general harmony may be called beautiful and becoming.[888]
[888] Sect. 16.
18. Cumberland acutely remarks, in answer to the objection to the practice of virtue from the evils which fall on good men, and the success of the wicked, that no good or evil is to be considered, in this point of view, which arises from mere necessity, or external causes and not from our virtue or vice itself. He then shows that a regard for piety and peace, for mutual intercourse, and civil and domestic polity, tends to the happiness of every one; and in reckoning the good consequences of virtuous behaviour we are not only to estimate the pleasure intimately connected with it, which the love of God and of good men produces, but the contingent benefits we obtain by civil society which we promote by such conduct.[889] And we see that in all nations there is some regard to good faith and the distribution of property, some respect to the obligation of oaths, some attachments to relations and friends. All men therefore acknowledge, and to a certain extent perform, those things which really tend to the common good. And though crime and violence sometimes prevail, yet these are like diseases in the body which it shakes off; or if, like them, they prove sometimes mortal to a single community, yet human society is immortal; and the conservative principles of common good have in the end far more efficacy than those which dissolve and destroy states.
[889] Sect. 20.