According to Bishop Cumberland, benevolence, in its large sense,—that is, a regard for all GOOD, universal and particular,—is the primary law of nature; and justice is one form, and a secondary form, of this law: a moral virtue, not a law of nature,—if I understand his meaning rightly.
Then which would he place highest, the law of nature or the moral law?
If you place them in contradistinction, then are we to conclude that the law of nature precedes the moral law, but that the moral law supersedes the law of nature? Yet no law of nature (as I understand the word) can be superseded, though the moral law may be based upon it, and in that sense may be above it.
73.
In this following passage the Bishop seems to have anticipated what in more modern times has been called the “greatest happiness principle.” He says:—
“The good of all rational beings is a complex whole, being nothing but the aggregate of good enjoyed by each.” “We can only act in our proper spheres, labouring to do good, but this labour will be fruitless, or rather mischievous, if we do not keep in mind the higher gradations which terminate in universal benevolence. Thus, no man must seek his own pleasure or advantage otherwise than as his family permits; or provide for his family to the detriment of his country; or promote the good of his country at the expense of mankind; or serve mankind, if it were possible, without regard to the majesty of God.”
74.
Paley deems the recognition of a future state so essential that he even makes the definition of virtue to consist in this, that it is good performed for the sake of everlasting happiness. That is to say, he makes it a sort of bargain between God and man, a contract, or a covenant, instead of that obedience to a primal law, from which if we stray in will, we do so at the necessary expense of our happiness. Bishop Cumberland has no reference to this doctrine of Paley’s;—seems, indeed, to set it aside altogether, as contrary to the essence of virtue.
On the whole, this good Bishop appears to have treated ethics not as an ecclesiastic, but as Bacon treated natural philosophy;—the pervading spirit is the perpetual appeal to experience, and not to authority.