Let us suppose, further, that the animal under consideration, as soon as he becomes aware of the existence and tendencies of this nature, holds all its impulses in perfect subjection to the law of love, and never suffers them, in a single instance, to induce a voluntary act contrary to that law. Is it in the power of the Intelligence to affirm guilt of that creature? Do we not necessarily affirm his virtue to be great in proportion to the strength of the propensity thus perfectly subjected to the Moral law? The above illustration renders two conclusions demonstrably evident: 1. For the mere _existence_ of any constitutional propensity whatever, the creature is not and cannot be responsible. 2. When all the actions of the Will, or voluntary power, are in perfect harmony with the moral law, and all the propensities are held in full subjection to that law, the creature stands perfect and complete in the discharge of his duty to God and Man. For the involuntary and necessary actings of those propensities, he cannot be responsible. It is no part of my object to prove that men have not derived from their progenitors, propensities which impel and induce them to sin; but that, for the mere _existence_ of these propensities, together with their necessary involuntary action, they are not guilty. SEC. II. DOGMAS IN THEOLOGY. Certain dogmas in Theology connected with the subject above illustrated here claim our attention. MEN NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SIN OF THEIR PROGENITORS. I. The first that I notice is the position, that creatures are now held responsible, even as "deserving God's wrath and curse, not only in this life, but in that which is to come," not merely for their own voluntary acts of disobedience, nor for their involuntary exercises, but for the act of a progenitor, performed when they had no existence. If God holds creatures responsible for such an act, we may safely affirm that it is absolutely impossible for them to conceive of the justice of such a principle; and that God has so constituted them, as to render it impossible for them to form such a conception. Can a being who is not a _moral_ agent sin? Is not _existence_ necessary to moral agency? How then can creatures "sin _in_ and _through_ another" six thousand years before their own existence commenced? We cannot conceive of creatures as guilty for the involuntary and necessary exercises of their own minds. How can we conceive of them as guilty for the act of another being,--an act of which they had, and could have, no knowledge, choice, or agency whatever? How can intelligent beings hold such a dogma, and hold it as a revelation from Him who has declared with an oath, that the "son shall not bear the iniquity of the father," but that "every man shall die for his own sins?" CONSTITUTIONAL ILL-DESERT.