2. This doctrine, being at variance with man's free agency, is, by necessary consequence, at variance with his _moral accountability_. There would be as much reason in holding the _atmosphere_ accountable, or the _trees_, or the _grass_, or the _clods_, or the _stones_. All his _views_, _feelings_, and _volitions_, being thus predetermined, he can no more be accountable for them than for the _circumstances_ of his _birth_, or the _natural color_ of his _skin_. He cannot reasonably be made the subject of commendation or censure--of reward or punishment. 3. It also follows, from this doctrine, that there is not, and cannot be any such thing as sin. If man be not a free agent--if he be incapable of acting otherwise than as predetermined by Jehovah--he is incapable of either virtue or vice. It would be as reasonable to predicate virtue or vice of the flux and reflux of the tides, or the circulation of the blood, as of man or angel under such circumstances. And, mark! if we, for the sake of the argument, should admit that man is capable of _virtue_, notwithstanding all his acts are foreordained and rendered infallibly certain by a power which he cannot successfully resist, he is still incapable of _vice_. He cannot sin, for this plain, all-sufficient reason--he cannot act otherwise than according to the will of God. "Nothing comes to pass in time but what was decreed from eternity." "None of the decrees of God can be defeated or fail of execution." So Calvinism explicitly affirms. Further, while the inference that there is and can be no sin is fairly deducible from the supposition that man is not a free agent, it does not depend upon that supposition. Let it be admitted, for the purpose of the argument, that man is a free agent, and capable of sinning, notwithstanding all his actions were predetermined, and what is the state of the case? _Still he has not sinned_. He has done nothing but what God freely willed and ordained he should do. The perfect obedience of Christ consisted in his doing in all respects the will of the Father. Either, then, it may be sinful to do the will of God, or there is--there can be no sin. I do not know of any way in which this consequence can be avoided. I do not believe that it can.