He thinks that the senate of the country should create a censorial power, " that by it the manners of the people may be regulated, and luxury, voluptuous debauchery, and other private vices prevented or made infamous." He holds that the " magistrate should provide proper instruction for all, especially for young minds, about the existence, goodness, and providence of God, and all the social duties of life and motives {82} to them." But he particularly maintains that " every rational creature has a right to judge for itself in these matters." While an earnest supporter of liberty of thought and action, he yet holds "as to those who support atheism, or deny a moral providence, or the obligation of the moral law, or social virtues, that the state may justly restrain them by force, as hurting,, it in its most important interests."When Calamy heard of Hutcheson's call to Glasgow, he smiled, and said he was not for Scotland, and that he would be reckoned there as unorthodox as Simson.But Hutcheson lived an age later than Simson; he was much more prudent, and was personally liked; he was professor of philosophy and not of theology; and so he passed through life with very little public opposition.Still the stone which he had set a-moving could not go on without meeting with some little ruffling.About the beginning of the session 1737-38, a paper was printed and published anonymously by one who professed to have been lately in the college, charging Hutcheson with teaching dangerous views.I have not seen this attack; but the reply prepared by a body of his favorite students is preserved.There seems to be force in some of the objections taken; others entirely fail.It is objected to him that he taught that we could have the knowledge of moral good and evil, although we knew nothing of the being of a God; it is replied that Hutcheson's doctrine was that we might have knowledge of some virtues, though we had not known God, and that a notion of moral good must come prior to any notion of the will or law of God.It is objected that he taught that the tendency to promote the happiness of others is the standard of moral goodness; it is acknowledged in the answer that benevolent affections towards others are our primary notion of moral goodness, and the primary object of our approbation.It is objected that he taught that it is sometimes lawful to tell a lie; it is answered that Hutcheson's doctrine was very much against lying, but did imply that there might be cases in which lying was justifiable.
Throughout Scotland there was an impression among the scholars who had been trained in the previous generation that he was sensualizing and degrading the old philosophy.
The friends of evangelical truth perceived that the young preachers {83} who admired him addressed them in a very different speech from that of their old divines and from that of the inspired writers.The description given of the new style of preaching by the clerical satirist Witherspoon, in his " Characteristics," was found to have point and edge:
" It is quite necessary in a moderate man, because his moderation teaches him, to avoid all the high flights of evangelic enthusiasm and the mysteries of grace of which the common people are so fond.It may be observed, nay, it is observed, that all our stamp avoid the word grace as much as possible, and have agreed to substitute the moral virtues'
in the room of the `graces of the Spirit.' Where an old.
