2. “All men are created equal.” This is only another form in which the social philosophy is pleased to express its one idea. We need only notice the additional error acquired by the change of language. “All men,” it is said, “are created.” It is written in the first of Genesis, that “God created man in his own image: in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them.” The term “man” is, of course, to be understood in its generic sense, and all that is affirmed is, that God directly _created_ Adam and Eve, and all their posterity seminally in them; and from whom, therefore, they have proceeded, as to both soul and body, by _generation_, and not by a separate act of creation by Jehovah. Now of these two created beings, one was placed in direct and immediate subordination to the other; and although it be true, as it often practically is, that the _fall_ has reversed this order of things, and placed the wife at the head of affairs, still the doctrine of headship, the doctrine of _inequality_, prevails in the one case as in the other. It is not amiss, however, to remark in passing, that even so great and humble a man as the Apostle Paul preferred the old-fashioned doctrine: he insists that we observe the original order of things: “I suffer not a woman to usurp authority over the man;” 1 Tim. ii. 12; “but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” 1 Cor. xiv. 34. As to other points in this dogma, they have been already treated. We only add that philosophy, no less than religion and true patriotism, cannot fail to regret that a dogma setting each of their claims aside, and teaching the purest agrarianism, and that under the most deadly form--the form of _pure abstract truth_--should have found its way into that immortal instrument, the Declaration of American Independence. We cannot otherwise account for it than by the fact that one of the presiding minds of that great paper had become strongly tinctured with the infidel philosophy of France. 3. “All men in a state of nature are free and equal.”