the pardon of the governor under the full conviction of his innocence. All the conflicting opinions and acts in the fiercest controversy that ever raged, this theory traces up to the Divine foreordination. 21. It must have appeared to the audience, by this time, that the character of God is fearfully involved in this inquiry. (1). We have already seen that this theory draws after it the logical consequences that God is the author of sin, or, if not the author of it in the strict and proper sense of the term, at least the plotter--the prime mover of it; that he prefers sin to holiness in every instance in which sin takes place; that he regards sin as the necessary means of the greatest good; that he has, at the same time, two hostile wills relative to the same thing. And now what shall we say of his _wisdom_, when we find him decreeing acts, and bringing them to pass, and yet, peremptorily forbidding them--enjoining acts, by formal solemn legislation, which, from all eternity he has foreordained shall never be performed? When we find him ordaining measures for the promotion, and measures for the counteraction, of his own plans? When we find him ordaining all the contradictions and vacillations by which human conduct is diversified and disgraced?--when every example of the most contemptible folly that ever turned the laugh, or the sneer, or the frown, or the sentiment of pity upon its immediate perpetrators, can be traced to the free counsels and designs of God, and finds its origin there? (2). What shall we say of the _sincerity_ of God when we find him enjoining one class of actions on pain of eternal damnation, while yet he has decreed, and by unfailing means brings to pass, in the same subjects, an entirely opposite class?--when we find him threatening, and expostulating, and professing to be grieved, on account of conduct which had its origin in his own free purposes, and is effected by his own providence?--when we find him engaged in enforcing two wills respecting the same thing, one directly the opposite of the other, one of which must necessarily fail of accomplishment, and then, wrathfully charging the failure upon those who have acted in all respects as he ordained they should?--when we find him offering salvation to all men, and solemnly asseverating that it is his will that all men should come to the knowledge of the truth, while yet the sinning, and ultimate damnation of myriads, were decreed innumerable ages before they existed? (3). What shall we say of his _holiness_, when the vilest crimes that ever caused the blush of shame, or the feeling of indignation or horror--_fornication, adultery, bestiality, fraud, oppression, lying, murder_--are in perfect coincidence with his eternal purposes, parts of his great plan, when he chose them in preference to their opposites, with all the means and appliances, great and small, by which they were brought to pass?