5. As an additional consideration, to show the absolute incompatibility of the idea of moral obligation with the doctrine of Necessity, permit me to direct the attention of the reader to this striking fact. While no man, holding the doctrine of Liberty as above defined, was ever known to deny moral obligation, such denial has, without exception, in every age and nation, been avowedly based upon the assumption of the truth of the doctrine of Necessity. In every age and nation, in every solitary mind in which the idea of obligation has been denied, this doctrine has been the great maelstrom in which this idea has been swallowed up and lost. How can the Necessitarian account for such facts in consistency with his theory? 6. The commands of God addressed to men as sinners and requiring them in all cases of transgression of the moral law, to choose and to act differently from what they do, are, if this doctrine is true, the perfection of tyranny. In all such cases men are required-- (1.) To perform absolute impossibilities; to reverse the law of necessity. (2.) To do that to which Omnipotence is inadequate. For Omnipotence, as we have seen, cannot reverse the law of necessity. Not only so, but-- (3.) Men in all such instances are required, as a matter of fact, to resist and overcome Omnipotence. To require us to reverse the relation established by Omnipotence, between antecedents and consequents, is certainly to require us to resist and overcome Omnipotence, and that in the absence of all power, even to attempt the accomplishment of that which we are required to accomplish. 7. If this doctrine is true, at the final Judgment the conscience and intelligence of the universe will and must be on the side of the condemned. Suppose that when the conduct of the wicked shall be revealed at that Day, another fact shall stand out with equal conspicuousness, to wit, that God himself had placed these beings where but one course of conduct was possible to them, and that course they could not but pursue, to wit, the course which they did pursue, and that for having pursued this course, the only one possible, they are now to be "punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of God and the glory of his power," must not the intelligence of the universe pronounce such a sentence unjust? All this must be true, or the doctrine of Necessity is false. Who can believe, that the pillars of God's eternal government rest upon such a doctrine? 8. On this supposition, probation is an infinite absurdity. We might with the same propriety represent the specimens in the laboratory of the chemist, as on probation, as men, if their actions are the necessary result of the circumstances in which Omnipotence has placed them. What must intelligent beings think of probation for a state of eternal retribution, probation based on such a principle?