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    ments due to the present Crisis , ' in speaking of the peace subsequent to the French revolution wars , and the depression of strength which was felt in every department , he observes , f What but an omnipotent hand could have infused such venom into the greatest of blessings , as utterly to transform its nature , and cause it to not this conceding the very point in dispute ? Is it not ascribing

    to divine permission , or to divine agency , the evils exhibited upon the earth by men's ambition and passions ? Is it candid in a man who can say this to accuse of promulgating sentiments of irreligious tendency those who mean no more ? Among the causes of sin ., he ranks the new prevailing notions upon morals which reduce all things to expediency ; and he makes this the foundation of an attack upon the metaphysical creed of Dr .

    Priestley . Hall was himself a metaphysician and a moral philosopher of no mean rank ; and this may account for his introducing into a sermon a topic somewhat foreign from the usual strain of pulpit addresses : but we think that here also , in his spirit of hostility to Unitarians , he has been unconsciously hurried into contradictions . Expediency , or our highest interest , is the chief motive to action . But what then ? Is it our interest in

    any given space of time , or in the career ofcair being , that is meant ? If the latter , how can it with truth be alleged ^ that virtue is reduced to a mere matter of calculation , that it is made a balance-sheet of profit and loss ? Our ancestors , he says , considered virtue as something ultimate . Granted ; but virtue must

    have some basis on which to rest : the fitness of things is a very indefinite term ; that fitness is not absolute 5 it is the ordination of the Divine Being ; and what better criterion of it can be afforded than observation of the tendency to good , or otherwise , of certain modes of conduct ? Whatever you make virtue to consist in , hi obedience to the will of God , or in attention to the dictates of the

    man within the breast , there must exist some rule to determine what is virtue no better can be obtained than the principle of expediency , or a regard to our final and immortal happiness . What other doctrine does he himself maintain when he says in his sermon on modern infidelity , that the disbelief in a God takes away all virtue , because it subverts the whole foundation of moral rewards anp ! punishments ?' If virtue be something ultimate , as ^ ^ he ^ cpjnteHds ^ . tyfey ipake .. i : er

    wards and punisliments lie at its foundation ? And if they do lie at its foundation , as undoubtedly they do , why brand those who in their exhortations point to these sanctions as aiders and abettors of sin ? Duty and happiness must go together ; obedience to the will of God is the paramount duty of man ; but inasmuch as obedience tends to happiness in inculcating virtue , we shall win over many more by pointing out its advantages , than by representing it as a thing of arbitrary appointment .

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    WRITINGS OF ROBERT HALL . 263

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 1, 1833, page 263, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2621/page/7/