3. Then, in what way can there be a _sin_ of unbelief? Is not the understanding the subject of evidence? A man, with evidence before him, can no more help seeing it or feeling its weight, than a man with his eyes or ears open can help seeing the house or tree before him, or hearing the sounds made around him. If a man disbelieve, it is because his conviction is true to his understanding. If I disbelieve a proposition, it is through lack of evidence; and the act is as virtuous (so far as virtue can belong to that which is inevitable), as the belief of it, when the evidence is perfect. If it is meant that a man is to believe, whether he sees evidence or not, it means that he is to believe certain things, whether true or false; in fine, that he may qualify himself for heaven by hypocrisy and lies. It is of no use that the unbeliever is told that he will be damned if he does not believe; what human frailty may do is another thing; but the judgment is clear, that a man _ought_ not to believe, nor profess to believe, what seems to him to be false, although he should be damned. The believer, who seeks to propitiate heaven by this deceit, ought to fear its wrath, not the unbeliever who rejects the dishonourable terms and throws himself on its justice. 4. There is the _vengeance_ of God. But is not the savage idea destroyed as soon as you name it? Can God have that which man ought not to have—_vengeance_. The jurisprudence of earth has reformed itself—we no longer _punish_ absolutely; we seek the _reformation_ of the offender. We leave retaliation to savages; and shall we cherish in heaven an idea we have chased from earth? But _what_ has to be punished? Can the sins of man disturb the peace of God? If so, as men exist in myriads and action is incessant, then is God, as Jonathan Edwards has shown, the most miserable of beings and the _victim_ of his meanest creatures. We, see, therefore, that sin against God is _impossible_. All sin is finite and relative—all sin is sin against man. Will God punish this, which punishes itself? If man errs, the bitter consequences are ever with him. Why should he err! Does he choose the ignorance, incapacity, passion, and blindness, through which he errs? Why is he precipitated, imperfectly natured into a chaos of crime! Is not his destiny made for him; and shall God punish that sin which is his misfortune rather than his fault? shall man be condemned to misery in eternity _because_ he has been made wretched, and weak, and erring, in time. But if man _has_ fallen at his conscious peril—_has_ thoughtlessly spurned salvation—_has_ offended God—will God therefore take vengeance? Is God without dignity or magnanimity? If I do wrong to him, who does wrong to me, I come down (has not the ancient sage warned me) to the level of my enemy? Will God thus descend to the level of vindictive man! Who has not thrilled at the lofty question of Volumnia to Coriolanus:— ‘Think’st thou it honourable for a noble man