Chap. VIII - Of the Excellency of Truth

Summary

Of the Excellency of Truth, as it is the Object and Cause of Vertue. The Matter and form of Vertuous Actions. That their form is infinitely more Excellent then their Matter, and the Heathen Morality infinitely defective and short of the Christian.

I do not see that Aristotle made the End of Vertue any other then a finite and temporal Felicity, which is infinitely short of that felicity which is here begun, and enjoyed for ever. He did not make GOD the Object and End of the Soul, and if all Acts are distinguished into their Kinds by their Objects and their Ends, those Vertues must be infinitely base, that have no other Objects or Ends, but Creatures; and those only Divine and Noble, that flow from an infinite and Eternal Original, respect an infinite and Eternal Object, rest in an Infinite and Eternal End. His Difinition of Felicity importeth all this, but his Behavior makes me to fear he did not understand it: As Seneca luckily hit upon that saying, Deus me solum dedit toti mundo, totum Mundum mihi soli, GOD gave me alone to all the World, and all the World to me alone; yet could not understand it. For had he Known what it was he said, he would have made a better use of it, and been more copious and explicite in the Illustration. An actual Respect had to infinite Obligations and Rewards, a Desire in every action to please an infinite and eternal Lover, to Glorifie a Divine and Endless Benefactor, to bring forth the fruits of infinite Benefits, and to be truely Grateful for all the Advantages of a mans Creation, that is made to have Dominion over all the World; these are higher and better Qualifications of those Vertuous Actions which Christians perform, than Heathens understood: And yet if nature were divested of its Corruption, the Natural Man, that is, no Christian, might, by the Light of Nature, be fitted to understand them.