Moral laws are set as a curb and
restraint to these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by
rewards and punishments that will overbalance the satisfaction any one
shall propose to himself in the breach of the law. If, therefore,
anything be imprinted on the minds of all men as a law, all men must
have a certain and unavoidable knowledge that certain and
unavoidable punishment will attend the breach of it. For if men can be
ignorant or doubtful of what is innate, innate principles are insisted
on, and urged to no purpose; truth and certainty (the things
pretended) are not at all secured by them; but men are in the same
uncertain floating estate with as without them. An evident indubitable
knowledge of unavoidable punishment, great enough to make the
transgression very uneligible, must accompany an innate law; unless
with an innate law they can suppose an innate Gospel too. I would
not here be mistaken, as if, because I deny an innate law, I thought
there were none but positive laws. There is a great deal of difference
between an innate law, and a law of nature; between something
imprinted on our minds in their very original, and something that
we, being ignorant of, may attain to the knowledge of, by the use
and due application of our natural faculties. And I think they equally
forsake the truth who, running into contrary extremes, either affirm
an innate law, or deny that there is a law knowable by the light of
nature, i.
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