Good and evil, as hath been shown, (B.  II. chap. xx.  Section 2, and chap. xxi.  Section 43,) are nothing but pleasure or pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us.  Moral good and evil, then, is only the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law, whereby good or evil is drawn on us, from the will and power of the law-maker; which good and evil, pleasure or pain, attending our observance or breach of the law by the decree of the law-maker, is that we call reward and punishment.

6.  Moral Rules.

Of these moral rules or laws, to which men generally refer, and by which they judge of the rectitude or gravity of their actions, there seem to me to be three sorts, with their three different enforcements, or rewards and punishments.  For, since it would be utterly in vain to suppose a rule set to the free actions of men, without annexing to it some enforcement of good and evil to determine his will, we must, wherever we suppose a law, suppose also some reward or punishment annexed to that law.  It would be in vain for one intelligent being to set a rule to the actions of another, if he had it not in his power to reward the compliance with, and punish deviation from his rule, by some good and evil, that is not the natural product and consequence of the action itself.  For that, being a natural convenience or inconvenience, would operate of itself, without a law.  This, if I mistake not, is the true nature of all law, properly so called.

7.  Laws.

The laws that men generally refer their actions to, to judge of their rectitude or obliquity, seem to me to be these three:—­1.  The divine law. 2.  The civil law. 3.  The law of opinion or reputation, if I may so call it.  By the relation they bear to the first of these, men judge whether their actions are sins or duties; by the second, whether they be criminal or innocent; and by the third, whether they be virtues or vices.

8.  Divine Law the Measure of Sin and Duty.

First, the divine law, whereby that law which God has set to the actions of men,—­whether promulgated to them by the light of nature, or the voice of revelation.  That God has given a rule whereby men should govern themselves, I think there is nobody so brutish as to deny.  He has a right to do it; we are his creatures:  he has goodness and wisdom to direct our actions to that which is best:  and he has power to enforce it by rewards and punishments of infinite weight and duration in another life; for nobody can take us out of his hands.  This is the only true touchstone of moral rectitude; and, by comparing them to this law, it is that men judge of the most considerable moral good or evil of their actions; that is, whether, as duties or sins, they are like to procure them happiness or misery from the hands of the almighty.