displayed the goodness of its Divine Author! Again, the scheme of Edwards is condemned out of his own mouth. If this scheme be better than another, because its motives are _stronger_, why did not God render it still more worthy of his goodness, by rendering its motives still more powerful and efficacious? Edwards admits, nay, he insists, that God might easily have rendered the motives of his moral government perfectly efficacious and successful. He repeatedly declares that God could have prevented all sin, “by giving such influences of his Spirit as would have been absolutely effectual to hinder it.” If the goodness of a constitution, then, is to be determined by the strength of its motives, as the argument of Edwards supposes, then we are bound, according to his principles, to pronounce that for which he contends unworthy of the goodness of God, as being radically unsound and defective. This is emphatically the case, as the Governor of the world might have strengthened the motives to obedience _indefinitely_, not by augmenting the danger, but by increasing the security of his subjects; that is to say, not by making the penalty more terrific, but by giving a greater disposition to obedience. The same thing may be clearly seen from another point of view. Let us suppose, for instance, that God had established the constitution or covenant, that if Adam had persevered in obedience, then all his posterity should be confirmed in holiness and happiness; and that if he fell, he should fall for himself alone. Would not such an appointment, we ask, have been more likely to have been attended with a happy issue than that for which Edwards contends? Let us suppose again, that after such a constitution had been established, its Divine Author had really secured the obedience of Adam; would not this have made a “happy issue” perfectly certain? Why then was not such a constitution established? It would most assuredly have been an infinitely clearer and more beautiful expression of the divine goodness than that of Edwards. Hence, the philosophy of Edwards easily furnishes an unspeakably better constitution for the government of the world, than that which has been established by the wisdom of God! Is it not evident, that the advocates of such a scheme should never venture before the tribunal of reason at all? Is it not evident, that their only safe policy is to insist, as they sometimes do, that we do not know what is consistent, or _inconsistent_, with the attributes of God, in his arrangements for the government of the world? Is it not evident, that their truest wisdom is to be found in habitually dwelling on the littleness, weakness, misery, and darkness of the human mind, and in rebuking its arrogance for presuming to pry into the _mysteries_ of their system?