Hence, the good is the true generic idea of the right. This alone can interpret the right in any case. Therefore, although man, in virtue of his constitution as a pure intelligence, has the power to do wrong, he has not, and never can have, the right to do wrong. For wrong is the negative of right; and any thing, whether attribute, quality, opinion, doctrine, or act—every thing, whether moral or physical—to be right, must be of the nature of the good: all else is wrong, not right. And it further follows, that the only true subjective right which any man has to exercise his power of self-control, is in doing that which is good, and not in doing that which is evil.
2. The natural rights of man are,
First—The essential good in his possession by natural endowment, and which is therefore inalienable. And, Second—The necessary conditions, whatever they may be, of the operation of the inherent good as an active principle. Some of these are inalienable, and others are alienable. To this view of natural rights the common usage of language conforms.
3. The acquired rights of man are, such good, in the form of benefits or privileges, as results to him from the performance of duty.
[LECTURE V.]
THE DOCTRINES OF RIGHTS APPLIED TO GOVERNMENT.
Government, human as well as Divine, is a necessity of man’s fallen condition—All men concur in this—Man did not originate government: he has only modified the form—The legitimate objects of government, and the means which it employs to effect these objects—The logical inferences: 1. Although he has the power, he has no right to do wrong; 2. As a fallen being, he is, without a government over him, liable to lose the power of self-control—What are the rights of man: 1. In a state of infancy; 2. In a state of maturity; and, 3. In a savage or uncivilized state—Civil government is not founded on a concession of rights.
Philosophers, it seems to me, strangely overlook the tendency of man’s fall to modify the operation of the laws of mind; and those who admit the fall still overlook this fact, that the depravity of man’s nature was the result of deprivation, and not the infusion of an evil principle as an attribute of his nature. But it is not with the theology of this subject that we are now dealing. The fact that, as a fallen being, he was deprived of the immediate presiding influence of the Divine Spirit, is the matter that more immediately engages our attention. His lower physical nature, the great medium of the soul’s communication with the outward world, and of consciousness in the embodied state, originally operated in perfect and harmonious subordination to his higher spiritual nature. In this condition, his appetites, propensities, and passions presented no bar to his happiness, or to that of his fellows. The government or control which his situation demanded, we may suppose, was simple, and concerned chiefly his relation to the Deity. But when, on the great occasion of his trial, he exercised his power of self-action, and exalted this nature as a rule of moral action, instead of the essential good of his higher nature, of which the will of God in the given case was the full and just exponent, there resulted a deprivation of the Divine Spirit, such as entirely changed the relation of those departments of his nature. Under the clouded condition of intellect consequent upon this deprivation, his lower nature, with its appetites, propensities, and passions, is brought into constant and fierce conflict with his spiritual nature. This change in the condition of his humanity presents his case in an aspect altogether new. The history of each individual man becomes the history of a warfare—a warfare with himself, and a warfare with his fellows. With a highly vigorous moral nature, he is also the subject of a carnal or depraved nature. In this state of things, government becomes an actual necessity of his condition. The Divine government, with all the aids and appliances afforded by the grand scheme of atonement, must appeal to his passions, both of hope and of fear. For it is only by reducing his lower nature to its originally subordinate and harmonious position that an equilibrium will be established, and his primordial happiness regained. But the Divine government, though operating in harmony with the claims of his moral nature, and founded upon the relation which he sustains to Jehovah, and indispensable to his happiness here and hereafter, of itself alone does not meet a great many of the immediate demands of his condition. Hence the statement of Solomon: “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” The consequences of obedience, high and holy as they are, and the consequences of disobedience, great and terrible as they are, are too remote from man, in many states of intellect and feeling in which he often places himself, to meet the immediate demands of his nature. Hence, that modification of government called civil government, is no less demanded by the necessities of his condition than the Divine.