2. This dogma is opposed to the intuitive convictions of the race. Present the proposition to any mind, that, under the Divine government, the creature is held responsible for his own voluntary acts and states of minds only, and such a principle "commends itself to every man's conscience in the sight of God." Present the dogma, on the other hand, that for a nature which renders actual obedience impossible, a nature which exists as the exclusive result of the agency of God himself, independently of the knowledge, choice, or agency of the creature, such creature is justly "bound over to the wrath of God, and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal," and there is not a conscience in the universe which will not reprobate with perfect horror such a principle. The intuitive convictions of the race are irreconcilably opposed to it. 3. If mankind, as this dogma affirms, have a nature from which voluntary acts of a given character necessarily result, to talk of real _growth_ or _confirmation_ in holiness or sin, is to use words without meaning. All that influence, or voluntary acts, can do in such a case, is to develope the nature already in existence. They can do nothing to confirm the soul in its tendencies, one way or the other. What should we think of the proposition, that a certain tree had formed and confirmed the habit of bearing particular kinds of fruits, when it commenced bearing, with the necessity of bearing this kind only, and with the absolute impossibility of bearing any other? So the soul, according to this dogma, commences action with the absolute impossibility of any but sinful acts, and with the equal necessity of putting forth sinful ones. Now, Necessity and Impossibility know and can know no degrees. How then can a mind, thus constituted, generate and confirm the habit of sinning? What, on this supposition, is the meaning of the declaration, "How can ye, who are _accustomed_ to do evil, learn to do well?" All such declarations are without meaning, if this dogma is true.