Second: We object that it is atheistic, utterly ignoring the existence of a Creator, and his relations to, and proprietorship in, man. It affects to treat men as though their existence were underived, and independent of any Supreme Being. It boldly discards God's right to determine under what obligations man shall live, and quietly contemns the great Scriptural fact that He has determined man shall live under social law. Third: This scheme is thoroughly unphilosophical, in that whereas the science of government should be an inductive one, this theory is, and in its nature must be, purely hypothetical. No body, no history pretends to relate in a single instance, any such facts as it professes to rest upon. This Locke admits, and even claims, absurdly seeking in this mode to evade this vital objection. Hence we assert that it has no claims to be entertained _in foro scientiæ_, even for discussion. Fourth: If man at first possessed that natural liberty, and passed from it under the obligation of constitutions and laws by a social contract, then sundry most inconvenient and preposterous consequences must logically follow. One of these is, that when once men had established their constitution, (in other words, their compact,) so long as its terms were observed by the magistrates and the minority, the majority could never righteously change it, no matter how inconvenient, or even ruinous, new circumstances might have made it, against the will of the minority or of the rulers. For when one has made a voluntary bargain, subsequent inconveniences of it do not justify its breach. The just man is one who changeth not, though he "sweareth to his own hurt." Another consequence would be, that it could never be settled what were the terms agreed upon in the original compact, and what part of existing laws were the accretions of unwarranted power, except in the case of written constitutions. Few nations have such. But a far worse consequence would be, that if the duty of allegiance originated in such compact, then any one unconstitutional act of the rulers or majority would dissolve it. For it is a covenant; but a covenant broken by one party is broken for both. Now, who believes that a single unconstitutional act of the ruler voids the whole allegiance of the aggrieved citizen? Where would be the government which would not be plunged into anarchy?