Now, granting the premises, we hold this argument to be unanswerable and conclusive. But is it not wonderful that it did not occur to so acute a mind as Foster’s, that the same premises would furnish a valid argument against the justice of all punishment, as well as against the justice of eternal punishments? Surely, if the utter inability of man to do good without divine grace is any extenuation, when such grace is not given, it is an entire and perfect exoneration. It is either this, or it is nothing. Such are the inevitable inconsistencies of the best thinkers, when the feelings of the heart are at war with the notions of the head. Instead of analyzing this awful subject, and tracing it down to its fundamental principles, upon which his reason might have reposed with a calm and immovable satisfaction, Foster seems to have permitted his great mind to take root in a creed of man’s devising, and then to be swayed by the gusts and counter-blasts of passion. Believing that man “must go wrong,” that nature and circumstances impose this dire necessity upon him, his benevolence could not contemplate an eternity of torments as due to such inevitable sin. It was repelled by “the infinite horror of the tenet.” On the other hand, his abhorrence of evil, and sense of justice, shrank with equal violence from the idea that all punishment is unjust; and hence he could say, “Far be it from us to make light of the demerit of sin, and to remonstrate with the Supreme Judge against a _severe chastisement_.” Thus did his great mind, instead of resting upon truth, perpetually hang in a state of suspense and vacillation between the noblest feelings of his heart and the darkest errors of his creed.