must be self-condemned, and cannot plead ignorance, or error of judgment in the case.
2. Another fundamental cause of moral error, is the prejudice and prepossession of a wrong education. False principles and absurd notions of God and religion, wrought early into the tender, unexperienced mind, and there radicated and confirmed from time to time, from youth to riper age, by parents, teachers, our most intimate friends and acquaintance, and such as we have the best opinion of, and confide most in; such causes make such strong impressions, that the grossest errors, thus rivetted and fixed, are with the greatest difficulty ever conquered or cleared off. In this case, men turn out well-grounded believers, and are well-armed against conviction. Circumcision or baptism fixes their religion in their infancy, and their church is as natural to them as their country. Free enquiry is with them an apostasy from the orthodox party, and as the great and sure tryal of their faith and fortitude, they will hear no reasonings about the holy religion they have taken upon trust.
3. Then the few, who have applied themselves to the study of morality, have done it

for the most part in a manner confused; and superficial enough: and often so, as even to build upon principles either entirely false, or obscure and uncertain; either foreign to its proper business, or mixt up with gross errors, and absurdities. From whence it comes to pass, that in all languages, the terms of morality, both in common discourse, and in the writings of the learned, are such as have the most obscure, confused, indetermined, and unfixed ideas, of any other terms whatever; men for the most part despising the things which are plain and ordinary, to run after such as are extraordinary and mysterious; and that they either will not know, or reject even truth itself, unless she brings some charm with her, to raise their curiosity, and gratify their passion for what is marvellous and uncommon.
In sum, the prejudices of the understanding, the illusions of the heart, and the tyranny established in the world with relation to opinions, form a grand obstacle to the serious study of morality; and to the attainment of a more exact knowledge of our duty. Nor is it to be expected that any will very much apply themselves to make discoveries in these matters, whilst the desire of esteem, riches, or power, makes men espouse the well-endowed opinions in fashion, and then seek arguments either to make good

their beauty, or varnish over and