[18] The foundation principle of that school of scepticism, at the head of which are the atheistical materialists, is, that all knowledge is derived through the medium of the senses, and that as God is not an object of sense, men can have no knowledge of his being or attributes. Now these deductions show that the truth of revealed religion may be firmly established upon their own proposition. CHAPTER VIII. THE ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF JUSTICE AND MERCY, AND THEIR TRANSFER TO THE CHARACTER OF JEHOVAH. Although holiness and justice convey to the mind ideas somewhat distinct from each other, yet the import of the one is shaded into that of the other. Holiness signifies the purity of the Divine nature from moral defilement; while justice signifies the relation which holiness causes God to sustain to men, as the subjects of the Divine government. In relation to God, one is subjective, declaring his freedom from sin; the other objective, declaring his opposition to sin, as the transgression of the Divine law. The Israelites might know that God was holy, and that he required of them clean hands and a clean heart in worship, and yet not understand the full demerit of transgressing the will of God, or the intensity of the Divine opposition to sin. God had given them the moral law, and they knew that he required them to obey it; but what, in the mind of God, was the proper desert of disobeying it, they did not know. They had been accustomed, like all idolaters, to consider the desert of moral transgression uncertain and unequal. Now they had to learn the immutable justice of the Supreme Being--that his holiness was not a passive quality, but an active attribute of his nature, and not only the opposite, but the antagonist principle to sin. _In what manner, then, could a knowledge of the Divine justice, or of the demerit of sin in the sight of God, be conveyed to the minds of the Jews?_ There is but one way in which any being can manifest to other minds the opposition of his nature to sin. A lawgiver can manifest his views of the demerit of transgression in no other way than by the _penalty_ which he inflicts upon the transgressor. In all beings who have authority to make law for the obedience of others, the conscience is the standard which regulates the amount of punishment that should be inflicted upon the disobedient; and the measure of punishment which conscience dictates, is just in proportion to the opposition which the lawgiver feels to the transgression of his law; that is, the amount of regard which he has for his own law, will graduate the amount of opposition which he will feel to its transgression. The amount of opposition which any being feels to sin is in proportion to the holiness of that being, and conscience will sanction penalty up to the amount of opposition which he feels to crime.