23 “All virtue and piety are thus resolvable into a principle of self-love. It is what Scripture itself resolves them into by founding them upon faith in God’s promises, and hope in things unseen. In this way it may be rightly said that there is no such thing as disinterested virtue. It is with reference to ourselves and for our own sakes that we love even God Himself.”—Waterland, _Third Sermon on Self-love_. “To risk the happiness of the whole duration of our being in any case whatever, were it possible, would be foolish.”—Robert Hall’s _Sermon on Modern Infidelity_. “In the moral system the means are virtuous practice; the end, happiness.”— Warburton’s _Divine Legation_, book ii. Appendix. 24 “There is always understood to be a difference between an act of prudence and an act of duty. Thus, if I distrusted a man who owed me a sum of money, I should reckon it an act of prudence to get another person bound with him; but I should hardly call it an act of duty.... Now in what, you will ask, does the difference consist, inasmuch as, according to our account of the matter, both in the one case and the other, in acts of duty as well as acts of prudence, we consider solely what we ourselves shall gain or lose by the act? The difference, and the only difference, is this: that in the one case we consider what we shall gain or lose in the present world; in the other case, we consider also what we shall gain or lose in the world to come.”—Paley’s _Moral Philosophy_, ii. 3. 25 “Hence we may see the weakness and mistake of those falsely religious ... who are scandalised at our being determined to the pursuit of virtue through any degree of regard to its happy consequences in this life.... For it is evident that the religious motive is precisely of the same kind, only stronger, as the happiness expected is greater and more lasting.”—Brown’s _Essays on the Characteristics_, p. 220. 26 “If a Christian, who has the view of happiness and misery in another life, be asked why a man must keep his word, he will give this as a reason, because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us. But if an Hobbist be asked why, he will answer, because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not. And if one of the old heathen philosophers had been asked, he would have answered, because it was dishonest, below the dignity of man, and opposite to virtue, the highest perfection of human nature, to do otherwise.”—Locke’s _Essay_, i. 3.