Moral System
Section 2 - XIV.
The principle of the will of the supreme Being
185. Martini (115) adds to the principle of the ends of things the will of the Creator which imposes the ends. The will of the Creator can either be interpreted in the ends things have, or understood as ordinary, positive will, but we cannot consider such a will as the first moral principle. The law or reason which is relative to our manner of mental conception precedes all others in the moral order. Who in fact tells me that the Creators will is to be respected? We need a reason for respecting the will of the Creator, a reason which is antecedent (in the order of our mind) to that most holy will. What we need is the law of reason which makes me discern in general what is and is not to be respected, and discern in particular the respect due to the will of the Creator. I would obviously be going around in a circle if I said that the obligation incumbent upon me to respect the Creators will arose solely from the fact that the Creators will commands me to respect it.
186. The first law with which we judge the exigency of things is, in the order of our mind, different from the will of the Creator and of any superior whatsoever. Through this law I know the respect due to such a will; it is not through such a will that I know the respect due to the law. In a word, if the law is to be first, it must be immediate, promulgated in us through itself, and self-evident; nothing must judge it it must judge everything. These characteristics are solely those of that law of truth which I have proposed. Truth is the light without which we cannot know beings or measure their worth. Hence in the Scriptures, truth is called the principle of the revealed law itself, PRINCIPIUM verborum tuorum, veritas. (116)
187. It is in the idea of supreme being that I find the reason for respecting it, just as in the idea of person I find the reason why the person should be respected. Now there is certainly an idea, the idea of entity, with which I know all beings. As soon as I consider this idea in its power to make me know the entity of particular things, and in this entity their moral exigency, the idea takes the form of light, first norm and first law. But the universal entity of all possible things leads us immediately into God.
Notes
(115) De Lege naturali, positiones in usum Auditorii Vindobonensis. Viennae, Austriae, 1767, c. 3.
(116) Ps 118: [160, Douai].