natural reasonn.

1440 Exemplification Duke of Gloucester in Patent Roll, 18 Henry VI (P.R.O.: C 66/447) m. 17 Thyndisposicion of my said lords adversarye that he neither hath Wisdom nor discrecion to gouerne hym self but must be led for defaut of naturell raison.

c1449 R. Pecock Repressor (1860) 13 Doom of natural resoun..is clepid ‘moral lawe of kinde’.

c1500 (?a1475) Assembly of Gods (1896) 1622 (MED) Now I apply thy naturall reson Vnto my wordys.

a1575 N. Harpsfield Treat. Divorce Henry VIII (1878) (modernized text) 74 There is no marriage, but only between the parents and children, of itself and immediately incident and repugnant to natural reason.

1690 T. Burnet Theory of Earth iv. 142 Natural reason can determine neither of these, sees no tract to follow in these unbeaten paths.

1837 T. Carlyle French Revol. III. ii. v. 124 The Mother Society, so far as natural reason can predict, seems ruining herself.

1992 J. M. Kelly Short Hist. Western Legal Theory ii. 60 Although they [sc. the Roman jurists] very frequently speak of natural law and natural reason (ius naturale, naturalis ratio)..they mean by this usage, in almost every case, something quite different from Cicero's concept of a primordial higher law.

c1443 R. Pecock Reule of Crysten Religioun (1927) 462 Scripture..ouȝte to be drawen into accordaunce of natural resoun and forto obeie to it, for certis þe lawe of kynde which is þe lawe of natural resoun writen in þe soule or in þe hertis of men..was ȝeuen of þee, lord, bifore þat eny law writen was ȝeuen.

1552 Abp. J. Hamilton Catech. Tabil sig. *.iv The artikillis of ye crede can nocht be comprehendit be natural reasone.

1674 R. Boyle Excellency Theol. i. i. 19 Meer natural reason..not excited by Revelation-discovery.

1704 J. Swift Tale of Tub ix. 159 For, if we take a Survey of the greatest Actions that have been performed in the World..We shall find the Authors of them all, to have been Persons, whose natural Reason hath admitted great Revolutions from their Dyet, their Education, the Prevalency of some certain Temper, together with the particular Influence of Air and Climate.

a1761 W. Law Comfort Weary Pilgrim (1809) 122 Men fallen from the..truth of the Christian life under the power of natural reason, and verbal learning.

1888 Dict. National Biogr. XVI. 218/2 Such knowledge of God as natural reason affords is ‘equivocal, indistinct, obscure’.

1993 Dict. National Biogr.: Missing Persons 69/2 Bishop wrote more than thirty Quaker tracts, employing apocalyptic imagery and grounding his arguments for religious liberty in scripture, early church history, and natural reason.