The Doctor, with some indignation, tries to evade this unavoidable consequence. “The true foundation of morality is the will of God. But is not the distinction between right and wrong, perpetually enforced by the law of _Moses_ on this principle? This then is the spring of all virtue, and to give it the greatest efficacy, the love and fear of God is there incessantly inculcated. But how does a long or short existence, a life here, or elsewhere, affect at all the practice of virtue so founded?”¹ ¹ _D. L._ page 587. All this is quite beside the point, and leaves the _Jews_ under the same incapacity of every divine virtue, as has been above asserted. For a short or long existence, is here never thought of, as a reason, why we should, or should not be morally good. For duration, considered in itself, whether short or long, is only a natural consequence of _that kind_ of life, which the creature hath. For, such as is its _internal_ nature, such is the good, and evil _that_ belongs to it, without any regard to its longer or shorter duration. Now it is the internal nature of man, not considered as short, but as wholly earthly, and created for only _earthly goods_, _that_ is the reason, why such a kind of life is incapable of any divine virtue, and cannot possibly have any other love, affections or tempers, but such as are confined to this world: and also, why every kind of envy, greediness, craft, and contrivance how to get the most of every earthly thing, must govern every man, that has only the earthly nature in him, as unavoidably, as they govern birds, and beasts. And to tell such a people of a goodness, to which their earthly nature does not lead them, as it leads every other animal to _that_ which it likes, is as vain, as to preach to the sparks, not to fly upwards. Nor can a nature, wholly earthly, any more sin by coveting only earthly things, than the _lion_ sins, by having all his heart set upon his prey.