These principles of the Scythians, as far as they are well founded, the Quakers believe to have originated in their more than ordinary attention to that divine principle which was given to them, equally with the rest of mankind, for their instruction in moral good; to that same principle, which Socrates describes as having suggested to his mind that which was good and virtuous, or which Seneca describes to reside in men as an observer of good and evil.  For the Scythians, living in solitary and desert places, had but little communication for many ages with the rest of mankind, and did not obtain their system of morality from other quarters.  From the Greeks and Romans, who were the most enlightened, they derived no moral benefit.  For Strabo informs us, that their morals had been wholly corrupted in his time, and that this wretched change had taken place in consequence of their intercourse with these nations.  That they had no scripture or written law of God is equally evident.  Neither did they collect their morality from the perusal or observance of any particular laws that had been left them by their ancestors; for the same author, who gives them the high character just mentioned, says that they were found in the practice of justice,[37] not on account of any laws, but on account of their own natural genius or disposition.  Neither were they found in this practice, because they had exerted their reason in discovering that virtue was so much more desirable than vice; for the same author declares, that nature, and not reason, had made them a moral people:  for[38] “it seems surprising, says he, that nature should have given to them what the Greeks have never been able to attain either in consequence of the long succession of doctrines of their wise men, or of the precepts of their philosophers; and that the manners of a barbarous, should be preferable to those of a refined people.”

[Footnote 37:  Justitia gentis Ingeniis culta, non Legibus.]

[Footnote 38:  Prorsus ut admirabile videatur, hoc illis naturam dare, quod Graeci longa sapientium doctrina praeceptisque philosophorum consequi nequeunt, cultosque mores incultae barbariae collatione soperari.]

This opinion, that the spirit of God was afforded as a light to lighten the Gentiles of the ancient world, the Quakers derive from the authorities which I have now mentioned; that is, from the evidence which history has afforded, and from the sentiments which the Gentiles have discovered themselves upon this subject.  But they conceive that the question is put out of all doubt by these remarkable words of the Apostle Paul.  “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:  which shew the work of the law written on their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing, or else excusing one another.”  And here it may be observed, that the Quakers believe