Richard Cumberland (philosopher) - De Legibus Naturae

In 1672, at the age of forty, he published his earliest work, entitled De legibus naturae. It is dedicated to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, and is prefaced by an "Alloquium ad Lectorem," contributed by Hezekiah Burton. It appeared during the same year as Pufendorf's De jure naturae et gentium, and was highly commended in a subsequent publication by Pufendorf. Stephen Darwall) writes that

the Treatise was regarded as one of the three great works of the modern natural law tradition,

the others being Grotius's On the Law of War and Peace, and Pufendorf's De jure naturae. It has been described as a

restatement of the doctrine of the law of nature as furnishing the ground of the obligation of all the moral virtues. The work is heavy in style, and its philosophical analysis lacks thoroughness; but its insistence on the social nature of man, and its doctrine of the common good as the supreme law of morality, anticipate the direction taken by much of the ethical thought of the following century.

(From The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).)

An English translation of the Treatise was published in 1727, by John Maxwell.