of letters on Metaphysical, Moral, or Political science. The truth is, that little deserving of our attention occurs in any of these departments prior to the seventeenth century; and nothing which bears the most remote analogy to the rapid strides made, during the sixteenth, in mathematics, astronomy, and physics. The influence, indeed, of the Reformation on the practical doctrines of ethics appears to have been great and immediate. We may judge of this from a passage in Melanchthon, where he combats the pernicious and impious tenets of those theologians who maintained, that moral distinctions are created entirely by the arbitrary and revealed will of God. In opposition to this heresy he expresses himself in these memorable words:—"Wherefore our decision is this; that those precepts which learned men have committed to writing, transcribing them from the common reason and common feelings of human nature, are to be accounted as not less divine, than those contained in the tables given to Moses; and that it could not be the intention of our Maker to supersede, by a law graven upon stone, that which is written with his own finger on the table of the heart,"[1]—This language was, undoubtedly, a most important step towards a just system of Moral Philosophy; but still, like the other steps of the Reformers, it was only a return to common sense, and to the genuine spirit of Christianity, from the dogmas imposed on the credulity of mankind by an ambitious priesthood.[2] Many
- ↑ "Proinde sic statuimus, nihilo minus divina præceceptaesse ea, quæ a sensu communi et naturæ judicio mutuani docti homines gentiles literis mandarunt, quam quæ extant in ipsis saxeis Mosis tabulis. Neque ille ipse cælestis Pater pluris a nobis fieri eas leges voluit, quas in saxo scripsit, quam quas in ipsos animorum nostrorum sensus impresserat."
Not having it in my power at present to consult Melanchthon's works, I have transcribed the foregoing paragraph on the authority of a learned German Professor, Christ. Meiners. See his Historia Doctrinœ de Vero Deo. Lemgoviæ, 1780, p. 12. - ↑ It is observed by Dr. Cudworth, that the doctrine which refers the origin of moral distinctions to the arbitrary appointment of the Deity, was strongly reprobated by the ancient fathers of the Christian church, and that it crept up afterward in the scholastic ages; Occam being among the first that maintained, that there is no act evil, but as it is prohibited by God, and which cannot be made good, if it be commanded by him. In this doctrine he was quickly followed by Petrus Alliacus, Andreas de Novo Castro, and others. See Treatise of Immutable Morality.
It is pleasing to remark, how very generally the heresy here ascribed to Occam is now reprobated by good men of all persuasions. The Catholics have even begun to recriminate on the Reformers as the first broachers of it; and it is to be regretted, that in some of the writings of the latter, too near approachers to it are to be found. The truth is, (as Burnet long ago observed,) that the effects of the Reformation have not been confined to the reformed churches;—to which it may be added, that both Catholics and Protestants have, since that era, profited very largely by the general progress of the sciences and of human reason.
I quote the following sentence from a highly respectable Catholic writer on the law of nature and nations:—"Qui rationem exsulare jubent a moralibus præceptis quæ in sacris literis traduntur, et in absurdam enormemque Lutheri sententiam imprudentes incidunt (quam egregie et elegantissime refutavit Melchior Canus Loc. Thelog. lib. ix. and x.) et ea docent, quæ si sectatores inveniant moralia omnia susque deque miscere, et revelationem ipsam inutilem omnino et inefficacem reffere possent."—(Lamperdi Florentini Juris Naturœ et Gentium Theoremata, tom. ii. p. 195. Pisis, 1782.) For the continuation of the passage, which would do credit to the most liberal Protestant, I must refer to the original work. The zeal of Luther for the doctrine of the Nominalists had probably prepossessed him, in his early years, in favour of some of the theological tenets of Occam; and afterwards prevented him from testifying his disapprobation of them so explicitly and decidedly as Melanchthon and other reformers have done.
