A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality

Summary

Contents

Book I

chapter i That there have been some in all ages, who have maintained that good and evil, just and unjust, were not naturally and immutably so, but only by human laws and appointment. An account of the most ancient of them from Plato and Aristotle; as also from Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch. Also in this latter age some have affirmed that there is no incorporeal substance nor any natural difference of good and evil, just and unjust. The opinion of some modern theologers proposed, with its necessary consequences, owned by some of them, by others disowned; but all agreeing in this, that things morally good and evil, just and unjust, are not so by nature, and antecedent to the divine command, but by the divine command and institution, chapter ii That good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest, cannot be arbitrary things without nature made by will. Everything must by its own nature be what it is, and nothing else. That even in positive laws and commands, it is not mere will that obligeth, but the natures of good and evil, just and unjust, really existing. The distinction betwixt things naturally and positively good and evil, more clearly explained. No positive command makes any thing morally good or evil, just or unjust; nor can oblige otherwise than by virtue of what is naturally just, chapter iii That the opinion of those who affirm that moral good and evil, just and unjust, depend upon the arbitrary will of God, implies a contradiction.