 We have got some strange Phrases, “that some things are antecedently reasonable in the Nature of the thing”, which some insist upon: “That otherwise, they say, if before Man was created, any Nature without a moral Sense had existed, this Nature would not have approved as morally good in the Deity, his constituting our Sense as it is as present”. Very true; and what next? If there had been no moral Sense in that Nature, there would have been no Perception of Morality. But “could not such Natures have seen something reasonable in one Constitution more than in another?”…They would have reasoned about both, and found out Truths: are both Constitutions alike reasonable to these Observers? No, they say, “the benevolent one is reasonable, and the malicious unreasonable:” And yet these Observers reasoned and discovered Truths about both: An Action then is called by us reasonable when ’tis benevolent, and unreasonable when malicious. This is plainly making the Word reasonable denote whatever is approved by our moral Sense, without Relation to true Propositions. (Essay, 153–4)