deserving of thanks, even if the promulgation of this theory had done no
further service than to challenge refutation.

[Footnote 1: God inscribed the divine or natural law (Do not that to
another, etc.) on the heart of man, when he gave him the reason to rule his
actions. The laws of nature are, it is true, not always legally binding
(_in foro externo_), but always and everywhere binding on the conscience
(_in foro interno_). Justice is the virtue which we can measure by civil
laws; love, that which we measure by the law of nature merely. The ruler
_ought_ to govern in accordance with the law of nature.]

%(d) Lord Herbert of Cherbury.%--Between Bacon (1605, 1620) and Hobbes
(1642, 1651) stands Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), who, by his
work _De Veritate_ (1624),[1] became the founder of deism, that theory of
"natural religion," which, in opposition to the historical dogmatic faith
of the Church theology, takes the reason, which is the same in all men,
as its basis and morality for its content. Lord Herbert introduces his
philosophy of religion by a theory of knowledge which makes universal
consent the highest criterion of truth (_summa veritatis norma consensus
universalis_), and bases knowledge on certain self-evident principles
(_principia_), common to all men in virtue of a natural instinct, which
gives safe guidance. These common notions (_notitiae communes_) precede all
reflective inquiry, as well as all observation and experience, which would
be impossible without them. The most important among them are the religious
and ethical maxims of conscience.

[Footnote 1: _Tractatus de Veritate prout distinguitur a Revelatione, a
Verisimili, a Possibile, et a False_. Also, _De Religione Gentilium_, 1645,
complete 1663.]