Now, whatever is in my possession by natural endowment is _mine_, in the strictest sense. Hence, _freedom_ is mine, _duty_ is mine, and _rectitude_ is mine, because the _good_ is mine, and those are the elements of the good, each one implying the others. Hence arises the idea of _natural right_: that is, the _right_ with which I am endowed by the constitution of my nature as a rational being. But what is that RIGHT? Evidently, the _good_. The good as an attribute is in my possession. I am constituted with it and by it. Hence it is inalienable. Divest me of the good as an attribute of my nature, i. e., liberty, rectitude, and duty, and I sink at once in the scale of being: I cease altogether to be a rational or accountable being. Let no one imagine that this position conflicts with the well-known fact that man is a fallen being. For although fallen, he is still accountable. True, his moral nature is in ruins, but still it is a moral nature. Though disordered, it is not eradicated. Hence the restoration by grace is called a conversion; but if the essential moral nature of man had been destroyed by the fall, and an attribute of essential evil had taken the place of it, his restoration could not be called, as it is, a _change_, but should be called in the strictest sense an _original_ creation. Hence, although man is fallen, depraved--and we need not object to the strong terms in which this depravity is usually expressed--still we find that the sentiment of all mankind is on the side of virtue, on the side of the good; and that men, though unchanged by sovereign grace, are still required to be honest, gentlemanly, and in all things regardful of each other’s rights. We admit of exceptions or modifications of this only in the case of those in whom humanity has not been fully developed, as before noticed, and those in civilized life who have so far abused their moral nature as, in the language of Paul, to fit themselves for destruction. Therefore, it still remains that the _good_ in the form of rectitude, _right_, is in some modification an endowment of my nature: the _right_, in itself, is mine by nature.