The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Christian Philosophy
• Preface
• Introduction
• An Explication of the Text. Gal. VI. 7.
• Section I
• Proposition I
• Proposition Ii
• Proposition Iii
• Proposition Iv
• Proposition V
• Proposition Vi
• Proposition Vii
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Section Ii
• Introduction
• Proposition I
• Proposition Ii
• Proposition Iii
• Proposition Iv
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Section Iii
• Introduction
• Proposition I
• Proposition Ii
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Corolary Iii
• Proposition Iii
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Corolary Iii
• Corolary Iv
• Section Iv
• A Preliminary Proposition
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Proposition I
• Proposition Ii
• Proposition Iii
• Query I
• Query Ii
• Query Iii
• Query Iv
• Query V
• Query Vi
• Query Vii
• Query Viii
• Query Ix
• Proposition Iv
• Proposition V
• Proposition Vi
• I.: Virtue Or Holiness Is the Condition of Eternal Happiness; Without It We Cannot Have a Right to It, Or Be Made Sharers of It.
• II.: Holiness Or Virtue Is Absolutely Necessary to Qualify For Future Happiness.
• III.: Further, the Scripture Specifies to Us the Exercises From Which the Future Happiness of the Virtuous Flow.
• IV.: That According to the Scripture Account of the State of the Virtuous In the Life to Come, It Is a State of Unchangeable, Immortal Glory and Happiness.
• Corolary I
• Corolary Ii
• Corolary Iii
• Corolary Iv
• Corolary V
• Conclusion

Query VI

If mankind should enter into a right society, such as perhaps never wholly obtained, but such however as<429> nature fully points out to us, and prompts us to establish; would they not be extremely happy? Would not knowledge, virtue, and all the goods of the mind, as well as all outward goods, be very largely and very universally shared? Are not societies happy in proportion as their social union approaches to the best model of it; and are they not miserable, in proportion as their manner of union or confederacy is distant from it? Is there not in nature a really practicable union, which would make men very virtuous and proportionably very happy? And isa not such an union being practicable, the intention of nature? Is any thing that nature could do to establish it wanting, that can be specified? And if so, is nature, the author of nature to be blamed, that it is not established?

[a. ]If any one can doubt of this, let him consider Mr. Harrington’s scheme of government, and his reasonings upon it. [Harrington’s “scheme of government and his reasonings upon it” are developed in extenso in his A Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics, in Political Works, ed. Pocock.]