For instance, two of our theologians have taught a contradictory doctrine, drawn as they thought from scripture, as follows; Jonathan Edwards maintained, that sin was "not the fruit of any positive agency or influence of the Most High;"――"it would be a reproach and blasphemy to suppose God to be the author of sin" in the sense of the agent, actor, or doer of a wicked thing. But Dr. Emmons maintained, that God "produced all the free, voluntary, moral exercises" of man; that God "creates evil when and where the good of the universe requires;" that "Satan placed certain motives before man's mind, which by a certain divine energy took hold of his heart and led him into sin." This teaching seems blasphemous, and contradictory to all notions of free, voluntary agency, as well as to the tenor of scripture. He relies for scripture proof on Exodus 4:21, where God says in respect to Pharaoh, "I will harden his heart." But this, rightly understood, is only a prediction of a certain event, that Pharaoh would harden his own heart as it is declared he did in ch. 9:34. So in respect to other quoted passages, it might be shown, that they were misunderstood and perverted from their proper meaning. We all know by common sense, by reason, and conscience, that we are free agents; therefore justly accountable to a holy, sin-hating God. But if God made, created, produced all our wicked volitions and acts; how can we regard him as just in punishing us for the very acts, which he produced? And what can such passages as James 1:13, mean, "God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man?" _Sonnet 82._ The following seem to be clear and prominent points of instruction in the divine Word. 1. There is ONE GOD, eternal, infinite, all-wise, perfect in goodness, the creator of the universe. Hence all the gods and idols of the heathen are vanity and a lie.――"There is one God the Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." Ephes. 2:5.――"The Lord our God is one Lord."――"God is one."――"One God and one Mediator." Mark 12:29. Galatians 3:20. I Tim. 2:5. Thus throughout the whole scripture the unity of God is asserted or implied. The name of God occurs 500 or 600 times in the Bible. "God is one;" one conscious, intelligent being and voluntary agent. No man in the exercise of his reason has any doubts as to his own oneness, or as to the oneness of any brother man or of any angel, of whom he may think or speak. If I am conscious, that I am a single intellectual being, and necessarily regard every other man as such; then it cannot enter my thoughts, that the one God is a compound being.