3. In reply to what has been said in respect to the _tendencies_ of the doctrine of Necessity, the fact will doubtless be adduced, that the greatest and best of men have held this doctrine, without a development of these tendencies in their experience. My answer is, that the goodness of such men, their sense of moral obligation, &c., did not result from their theory, but existed in spite of its intrinsic tendencies. They held this doctrine in theory, and yet, from a _consciousness_ of Liberty, they practically adopted the opposite doctrine. Here, we have the source of the deep feeling of obligation in their minds, while the intrinsic and exclusive tendency of their _Theory_, even in them, was to weaken and annihilate this hallowed feeling. The difference between such men and sceptics is this: The piety of the former prevents their carrying out their theory to its legitimate results; while the impiety of the latter leads them to march boldly up to those results--a fearless denial of moral obligation in every form. LAST RESORT. 4. The final resort of certain Necessitarians, who may feel themselves wholly unable to meet the arguments adduced against their own and in favor of the opposite theory, and are determined to remain fixed in their opinions, may be readily anticipated. It is an assumption which may be expressed in language somewhat like the following: "After all, the immortal work of Edwards still lives, and will live, when those of his opponents will be lost in oblivion. That work still remains unanswered." A sweeping assumption is a very easy and summary way of disposing of a difficulty, which we might not otherwise know what to do with. Let us for a moment contemplate some of the facts which have been undeniably established in reference to this immortal work. (1.) At the outset, Edwards stands convicted of a fundamental error in philosophy, an error which gives form and character to his whole work--the confounding of the Will with the Sensibility, and thus confounding the characteristics of the phenomena of the former faculty with those of the phenomena of the latter. (2.) His whole work is constructed without an appeal to Consciousness, the only proper and authoritative tribunal of appeal in the case. Thus his reasonings have only an accidental bearing upon his subject. (3.) All his fundamental conclusions have been shown to stand in direct contradiction to the plainest and most positive testimony of universal Consciousness. (4.) His main arguments have been shown to be nothing else but reasoning in a circle. He defines, for example, the phrase "Greatest apparent good," as synonymous with _choosing_, and then argues, from the fact that the "Will always is as the greatest apparent good," that is, that it always chooses as it chooses, that it is subject to the law of Necessity.