cui bono? cui malo?
system of ethics, — that system which places the good and evil of actions in their painful or pleasurable effects on the sensuous or passive nature of sentient beings, not in the will, the pure act itself. For, according to this system, God must be either a passible and dependent being, — that is, not God, — or else he must have no interest, arid therefore no motive or impulse, to reward virtue or punish vice. The veil which the Epicureans threw over their atheism was itself an implicit atheism. Nay, the world itself could not have existed; and as it does exist, the origin of evil (for if evil means no more than pain
in genere
, evil has a true being in the order of things) is not only a difficulty of impossible solution, but is a fact necessarily implying the non-existence of an omnipotent and infinite goodness, — that is, of God. For to say that I believe in a God, but not that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-good, is as mere a contradiction in terms as to say, I believe in a circle, but not that all the rays from its centre to its circumference are equal.
I cannot read the profound truth so clearly expressed by Donne in the next paragraph — "it does not only want that rectitude, but it should have that rectitude, and therefore hath a sinful want" — without an uneasy wonder at its incongruity with the preceding dogmas.
Serm. LXXI. Mat. iv. 18, 19, 20. p. 717.
Ib.
p.725. A.
But still consider, that they did but leave their nets, they did not burn them. And consider, too, that they left but nets, those things which might entangle them, and retard them in their following of Christ, &c.
An excellent paragraph grounded on a mere pun. Such was the taste of the age; and it is an awful joy to observe, that not great learning, great wit, great talent, not even (as far as without great virtue that can be) great genius, were effectual to preserve the man from the contagion, but only the deep and wise enthusiasm of moral feeling. Compare in this light Donne's theological prose even with that of the honest Knox; and, above all, compare Cowley with Milton.