  Next, conscience is closely connected to autonomy: when we act according to conscience we act as a law unto ourselves or according to a law of our own nature. By being a law unto oneself Butler seemed to mean being motivated by our inner sense of moral rightness and wrongness and not being motivated by considerations external to the rightness or wrongness of acting or not acting (Sermon III §6). For Butler, like Clarke, moral law, duty, obligation, or virtue, is right or wrong, morally good or bad independent of any punishment or reward (“Preface” § 29; “Dissertation on Virtue” §8). Butler criticized those forms of natural law and Hobbesian accounts of motivation that held that I am morally motivated and given an authoritative reason for acting by a law sanctioned with rewards and punishments by a divine or civil legislator. He argued that insofar as sanctions are superadded to the moral rightness or wrongness of the act there is no connection between the sanction and the rightness or wrongness of the action beyond the arbitrary will of the legislator.  This connection is insufficient for moral motivation. When I act primarily or only due to an external sanction I am not acting from a law unto myself (see Darwall 1992).