There are three main kinds of moral rules or laws by reference to which people commonly judge their actions—the divine law, the civil law, and the law of opinion or reputation—and each provides a distinct moral denomination: sins or duties, crimes or innocence, and virtues or vices, respectively.

By John Locke, from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Key Arguments

  • Locke lists 'three sorts' of moral rules 'with their three different enforcements, or rewards and punishments': 'I. The divine law. II. The civil law. III. The law of opinion or reputation, if I may so call it.'
  • He correlates each with a particular kind of moral judgment: 'By the relation they bear to the first of these, men judge whether their actions are sins or duties; by the second, whether they be criminal or innocent; and by the third, whether they be virtues or vices.'

Source Quotes

Laws. The laws that men generally refer their actions to, to judge of their rectitude or obliquity, seem to me to be these three:— I. The divine law. II. The civil law. III. The law of opinion or reputation, if I may so call it. By the relation they bear to the first of these, men judge whether their actions are sins or duties; by the second, whether they be criminal or innocent; and by the third, whether they be virtues or vices.
The law of opinion or reputation, if I may so call it. By the relation they bear to the first of these, men judge whether their actions are sins or duties; by the second, whether they be criminal or innocent; and by the third, whether they be virtues or vices. 8.

Key Concepts

  • the laws that men generally refer their actions to, to judge of their rectitude or obliquity, seem to me to be these three:— I. The divine law. II. The civil law. III. The law of opinion or reputation, if I may so call it
  • By the relation they bear to the first of these, men judge whether their actions are sins or duties; by the second, whether they be criminal or innocent; and by the third, whether they be virtues or vices

Context

Book II, chapter XXVIII, section 7, where Locke classifies the principal moral rules and the kinds of evaluation each underwrites.