II. The universal consent of mankind furnishes us with a second, from which we may reason in this manner : " What common opinion and the innate conceptions of all assign to God, that is natural to God; but this corrective justice is so assigned to God: therefore, this justice is natural to God."
The major proposition is evident ; for what is not natural to God neither exists in him by any mode of habit or mode of affection, but is only a free act of the divine will, and the knowledge of that can by no means be naturally implanted in creatures; for whence should there be a universal previous conception of an act which might either take place or never take place? No such thing was at the first engraven on the hearts of men, and the fabric of the world teaches us no such thing.
But the minor proposition is established by a threefold proof: — 1. By the testimony of the Scripture; 2. By the testimony of every sinner's conscience ; and 3. By that of the public consent of all nations.
First, The holy Scriptures testify that such an innate conception^ is
' The sentence might he more intelligihly rendered : " There is nothing which we affirm of vindicatory justice, — whether that it is meant of God essentially, and not only denominatively, that it has an absolute name (for it is called " holiness" and " purity"), that we have it expressed both in the abstract and concrete, that it requires the punish- ment of sinners, that it implies a constant and immutable will of punishing every sin, according to the rule of divine wisdom and riglit,^ — but what is ofttimes affirmed ex- pressly, directly, and particularly, in the passages above mentioned." — Ed.
2 The Greek word ■rpoX>t4''s is employed in the original, for which perhaps it was difficult to find a precise rendering in one English word. It was a word employed in the canonics or psychology of Epicurus to denote the second of his conditions or criteria of truth, which related to ideas as distinguished from sensations or emotions, though, like them, derived from sensuous perception. It implied such a primary and absolute idea of a thing as existed in the mind antecedently to any objective presenta- tion of it, and without which no mental act can take place regarding it, whether of naming, thinking, doubting, or inquiring. It is used by Owen to describe a principle in the himian mind which is not created by the evidence of testimony or any coui'se of training, which is natui'ally and essentially interwoven with our mental constitu-
518 A DISSERTATION ON DIVINE JUSTICE. [PART I.
implanted by God in the minds of men. Thus the apostle to the Romans, chap. i. 82, " Who knowing the judgment of" God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death." He is here speaking of those nations that were the most forsaken by God, and delivered over to a reprobate mind; yet even to these he ascribes some remain- ing knowledge of this immutable right of God, which renders it neces- sary that " every transgression should receive its just recompense of reward," and that sinners should be deserving of death in such a manner that it would be unworthy of God not to inflict it. That is to say, although the operations of this observing and acknowledging principle should often become very languid, and be even almost en- tirely overwhelmed by abounding wickedness, — for " what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves," — yet that mankind must cease to exist before they can altogether lose this innate sense of divine right and judgment. Hence the barba- rians concluded against .Paul, then a prisoner and in bonds, seeing the viper hanging on one of his hands, that " no doubt he was a mur- derer, whom, though he had escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffered not to live." Here they argue from the effect to the cause; wdiich, in matters relating to moral good or evil, they could not, unless con- vinced in their consciences that there is an inviolable connection between sin and punishment, which they here ascribe to Justice.^
Justice among them, according to their fabulous theology, Avhich was particularly favoured by the bulk of the people, Avas the daughter of Jupiter, whom he set over the affairs of mortals, to avenge the in- juries which they should do to one another, and to inflict condign punishment on all those who should impiously offend against the gods. Hence Hesiod, speaking of Jupiter, says, —
" lie married a second -wife, the fair Themis, who brought forth the Hoiu-s,
And Eunomia, and Justice, etc.,
Who shoidd watch o'er the actions of mortal men." — Hesiod iu Thcog. 901.
Again, the same author says, —
" Justice is a virgin, descended from Jupiter, Chaste, and honour'd by the heavenly deities; And when any one hath injured her with impious indignity, [Instantly she, seated beside her father, Saturnian Jupiter, Complains of the iniquity of men," etc.] — Hesiod in Opcr. 256.
Also, Orpheus in the hymns, —
" I sing the eye of Justice, who looketh behind her, and is fair, Who likewise sits upon the sacred throne of sovereign Jupiter As the avenger of the unjust."