Surely IF it be true that a man may justifiably stand connected with a government in which he sees some slight evils--still it is also true, even then, that governments _may_ sin so atrociously, so enormously, may make evil so much the _purpose_ of their being, as to render it the duty of honest men to wash their hands of them. I may give money to a friend whose life has some things in it which I do not fully approve--but when his nights are passed in the brothel, and his days in drunkenness, when he uses his talents to seduce others, and his gold to pave their road to ruin, surely the case is changed. I may perhaps sacrifice health by staying awhile in a room rather overheated, but I shall certainly see it to be my duty to rush out, when the whole house is in full blaze. OBJECTION VIII. God intended that society and governments should exist. We therefore are bound to support them. He has conferred upon us the rights of citizenship in this country, and we cannot escape from the responsibility of exercising them. God made us _citizens_. ANSWER. This reminds me of an old story I have heard. When the Legislature were asked to set off a portion of the town of Dorchester and call it South Boston, the old minister of the town is said to have objected, saying, "God made it Dorchester, and Dorchester it ought to be." God made us social beings, it is true, but _society_ is not necessarily the Constitution of the United States! Because God meant some form of government should exist, does not at all prove that we are justified in supporting a wicked one. Man confers the rights and regulates the duties of citizenship. God never made a _citizen_, and no one will escape, as a man, from the sins he commits as a citizen. This is the first time that it has ever been held an excuse for sin that we "went with the multitude to do evil!" Certainly we can be under no _such_ responsibility to become and remain _citizens_, as will excuse us from the sinful acts which as such citizens we are called to commit. Does God make obligatory on his creature the support of institutions which require him to do acts in themselves wrong? To suppose so, were to confound all the rules of God's moral kingdom. President Wayland has lately been illustrating, and giving his testimony to the principle, that a combination of men cannot change the moral character of an act, which is in itself sinful--that the law of morals is binding the same on communities, corporations, &c. as on individuals. After describing slavery, and saying that to hold a man in such a state is wrong--he goes on: