be convinced of their Obligation. Others also may come to be of the same Mind, from their Education, Company, and Customs of their Country; which Perswasion however got, will serve to set Conscience on work, which is nothing else, but our own Opinion of our own Actions. And if Conscience be a Proof of innate Principles, contraries may be innate Principles: Since some Men, with the same bent of Conscience, prosecute what others avoid.
ADD TEXT HERE §. 9. But I cannot see how any Men, should ever transgress those Moral Rules, with Confidence, and Serenity, were they innate, and stamped upon their Minds. View but an Army at the sacking of a Town, and see what Observations, or Sense of Moral Principles, or what touch of Conscience, for all the Outrages they do. Robberies, Murders, Rapes, are the Sports of Men set at Liberty from Punishment and Censure. Have there not been whole Nations, and those of the most civilized People, amongst whom, the exposing their Children, and leaving them in the Fields, to perish by Want, or wild Beasts, has been the Practice, as little condemned or scrupled, as the begetting them? Do they not still, in some Countries, put them into the same Graves with their Mothers, if they die in Child-birth; Or dispatch them, if a pretended Astrologer declares them to have unhappy Stars? And are there not Places, where at a certain Age, they kill, or expose their Parents without any remorse at all? In a Part of Asia, the Sick, when their Case comes to be thought desperate, are carried out and laid on the Earth, before they are dead, and left there, exposed to Wind and Weather, to perish without Assistance or Pity. (α) It is familiar amongst the Mengrelians, a People professing Christianity, to bury their Children alive without scruple. (β) There are Places where they eat their own Children. (γ) The Caribes were wont to geld their Children, on purpose to fat and eat them. (δ) And Garcilasso de la Vega tells us of a People in Peru, which were wont to fat and eat their Children they got on their female Captives, which they kept as Concubines for that Pupose. * The Virtues, whereby the Tououpinambas believed they merited Paradise, were, Revenge, and eating abundance of their Enemies. (ζ) They have not so much as a Name for God, Lery pag. 216. No Acknowledgment of any God, no Religion, no Worship, pag. 231. The Saints, who are canoniz'd amongst the Turks, lead Lives, which one cannot with Modesty relate. A remarkable Passage to this Purpose, out of the Voyage of Baumgarten, which is a Book, not every Day to be met with, I shall set down at large, in the Language it is published in. Ibi (sc. prope Belbes in AEgypto) vidimus sanctum unum Saracenicum inter arenarum cumulos, ita ut ex utero matris prodiit nudum sedentem. Mos est, ut didicimus Mahometistis, ut eos, qui amentes & sine ratione sunt, pro sanctis colant & venerentur. Insuper & eos qui cumdiu vitam egerint inquinatissimam, voluntariam demum paenitentiam & paupertatem, sanctitate venerandos deputant. Ejusmodi verò genus hominum libertatem quandam effraenem habent, domos quas volunt intrandi, edendi, bibendi, & quod majus est, concumbendi; ex quo concubitu, si proles secuta suerit, sancta similiter habetur. His ergo hominibus, dum vivunt, magnos exhibent honores; mortuis verò vel templa vel monumenta extruunt amplissima, eos{que} contingere ac sepelire maximae fortunae ducunt loco. Audivimus haec dicta & dicenda per interpretem à Mucrelo nostro. Insuper sanctum illum, quem eo loci vidimus, publicitus apprimè commendari, eum esse Hominem sanctum, divinum ac integritate praecipuum; eo• quod, nec faeminarum unquam esset nec puerorum, sed tantummodo asellarum concubitor atque mularum. Peregr. Baumgarten, l. 2. c. 1. p. 73. Where then are those innate Principles, of Justice, Piety, Gratitude, Equity,Chastity?
