The
place that determines our duty to our country is a social, civil
relation.
These are the opinions of the author whose cause I defend. I lay them
down, not to enforce them upon others by disputation, but as an account
of his proceedings. On them he acts; and from them he is convinced that
neither he, nor any man, or number of men, have a right (except what
necessity, which is out of and above all rule, rather imposes than
bestows) to free themselves from that primary engagement into which
every man born into a community as much contracts by his being born into
it as he contracts an obligation to certain parents by his having been
derived from their bodies. The place of every man determines his duty.
If you ask, _Quem te Deus esse jussit_? you will be answered when you
resolve this other question, _Humana qua parte locatus es in re_?[22]
I admit, indeed, that in morals, as in all things else, difficulties
will sometimes occur. Duties will sometimes cross one another. Then
questions will arise, which of them is to be placed in subordination?
which of them may be entirely superseded? These doubts give rise to that
part of moral science called _casuistry_, which though necessary to be
well studied by those who would become expert in that learning, who aim
at becoming what I think Cicero somewhere calls _artifices officiorum_,
it requires a very solid and discriminating judgment, great modesty and
caution, and much sobriety of mind in the handling; else there is a
danger that it may totally subvert those offices which it is its object
only to methodize and reconcile.
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