430 



ON THE HYPOTHESIS 



tution of human nature,*- common understanding,! moral sense,J moral 

 principle,§ suggestions,!! and, finally, inspiration : thus putting this im- 

 aginary power, if not in the place of a Bible, upon an equality with it. 



The " original and natural judgments" of this faculty, says Dr. Reid, are 

 the INSPIRATION or THE ALMIGHTY : " they serve to direct us in the com- 

 mon affairs of hfe, where our reasoning faculty would leave us in the dark. 

 They are a part of our constitution ; and ail the discoveries of our reason 

 are grounded upon them. They make up the common sense of m'ankmd, 

 and what is manifestly contrary to any of those first principles is what we 

 call at>surd."ir 



* Stewart, essay i. ch. i. p. 7. Reid, p. 391. Principles of the Constitution, Beatfie, 

 part i. cl:i. li. p. 29. Original Priucipies of tiie Constitution, Reid, Inq. ch. vi. lect. xxiv. 

 pp. 428. 441. 



t Reid, ch. vi. lect xx. 380. 



X Stewart, essay i. ch. iv. p. 44. ; a phrase of Shaftesbury, and adopted from hina by Hut- 

 cheson. 



§ Beattie, part i. ch. ii. 29. |j Ibid, essay ii. ch. ii. p. 96. Reid, ch. vi. lect. ii. p. 157. 

 If Reid, ch. vii. p. 432. 



In treating of the subject of instinct, I had occasion to notice that Dr. Hancock, in a recent 

 work of much moral excellence, has taken the same, generalized view of those various powers, 

 and has directly resohedthe whole into an iniraediate and continual flow of divine inspiration 

 through the agency of the Holy Spirit : so that the lowest animal, in its instincts, and the 

 most gifted saint, in his special illumination, are supplied from one and the same intellectual 

 fountain. And hence, in Dr. Hancock's view, this is a power or energy which not only 

 serves " to direct us in <he common atf tirs of life, where our reasoning faculty would leave us 

 in the dark," but to enlighten us in the sublime mysteries of spii-ilual truth. *' In the same 

 manner as the Divine Being has scattered the seeds of plants and vegetables in the body of 

 the earth, so he has implanted a portictn "f his own incorruptible seed, or that which in Scrip- 

 ture language is called ' the seed of the kingdom,' in the soul of every individual of the human 

 race." — Essay on Instinct, p. 459. And hence, though Dr. Hancock is obliged to "admit 

 that there are no innate ideas, according to the strict meaning of the term, and no formally 

 inscribed truths, like established propositions to be discovered in early tile,- — yet it is lair to 

 presume that the rudiments or inherent propfnsilies leading to mental and corporeal perfec- 

 tion, are still essentially in existence. Hence, because we cannot discover in the inlant mind 

 the manifest signs of an original innate truth or conception that there is a God, and the simple 

 propositions relative to moral and religious duty, we are not to conclude that it has no ien~ 

 dencyXo develope these notions." — Ibid. p. 314, 315. 



We have here a clear example of the difficulty of keeping an hypothesis within due limits 

 that has no fixt principles to be built upon. So far, however, as these writers appeal to Scrip- 

 ture in support of their doctrine of a moral sense, or instinctive love of virtue, propensity to 

 moral right, internal light or innate idea of God, they seem to be opposed by every page to 

 ivhich they refer. For whatever man may become by a gradual cultivation of his mental 

 powers, or by immediate irradiation from heaven, we are expressly told, what, indeed, we 

 bave sufficient proofs of if we look around us, and especially into savage tribes, that by nature 

 his " heart is desperately wicked ;" that shortly after the fall, God beheld that " the wicked- 

 ness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart 

 was only evil continually ;" that " in the flesh dwelleth no good thing ;" that men by nature 

 are under the dominion of sin,~whose power is so great as to constitute as it were a " law 

 in the members, — and a law so active and hostile to every good principle, as te be for ever 

 " warring against the law of the mind" when enlightened by a divine revelation, and even 

 gifted, as St. Paul was, when he wrote this of himself, as well as of others, with the power of 

 the Holy Spirit. And it is hence St. Paul tells us farther, that mankind, in their natural state, 

 instead of being children of light, with innate tendencies or propensities to good, have a heart 

 at *' enmity against God and " are childi'en of wrath." Whilst, instead of referring us to 

 any kind of prsecognita, inbred notions, or instinctive suggestions, in proof of the existence 

 and attributes of a Deity, St. Paul, like Locke, sends us to the works of nature and of provi- 

 dence ; to the world vnthout instead of to the world within us ; and to the exercise of our own 

 senses in relation to them : " for the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, 

 ARE CLEARLY SEEN, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal 

 roWER and godhead." And these proofs are so manifest, and the duties they enjoin so easily 

 deducible, as to form a law of nature, " a law unto themselves," in the minds of those who 

 attend to them, and have no revealed law, — a conscience of what is right and wrong ; so as to 

 leave the whole world, as he farther adds, " without excuse," for not acquiring this knowledge, 

 and this natural law. It is to the same book of nature, and for the same purpose, that the 

 Psalmist leads h-imself in Ps. viii. S. " When I consider the heavens, the work of thy hands : 

 the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained ;" and to which he leads every one else, in 

 Ps- xix. 1— 3. And to what but the same divine yet external proof does our Saviour lead 

 us in Matt. vi. 28. " Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow," &c. as well as in 

 numerous other places ? — external objects generally forming a text to the divine comment of 

 him who " spalce as never 7?i«n spaA-e." " '' . 



