'Dech.' I see no difficulty in it at all. God gives us laws only for our good, and will never suffer those laws to become a snare to us, and the occasion of our eternal misery. Here is the 'cardo'! The man of sense asserts that it is necessary for the good of all, that a code of laws should exist, while yet it is impossible that all should at all times be obeyed by each person: but what is impossible cannot be required. Nevertheless, it may be required that no 'iota' of any one of these laws should be wilfully and deliberately transgressed, nor is there any one for the transgression of which the transgressor must not hold himself punishable. "And yet" (says our man of sense,) "what may not be said of any one point, or any one moment, cannot be denied of the collective agency of a whole life, or any considerable section of it. Here we find ourselves constrained by our best feelings to praise or condemn, to reward or punish, according as a great predominance of acts of obedience or disobedience, and a continued love of the better, or the lusting after the worst, manifests the maxim ('regula maxima'), the radical will and proper character of the individual. So parents judge of their children; so schoolmasters of their scholars; so friends of friends, and even so will God judge his creatures, if we are to trust in our common sense, or believe the repeated declarations in the Old Testament." And now I should be glad to hear any satisfactory 'sensible' reply to this, or any answer that does not fly higher than 'sense' can follow, and pierce into "the thick clouds" of decried metaphysics! For no fair reply can be imagined, but one which would find the root of the moral evil, the true [Greek: ponaerón], in this very impossibility. Ib. p. 249. 'Cunningham.' But how does all this discourse about sacrifices and the natural light show that your faith does not ascribe injustice to God in putting an innocent person to death for the transgressions of the guilty? 'Shep.' Was Christ innocent? 'Cunn.' 'He was without sin.' 'Shep.' And he was put to death by the appointment and predetermination of God? 'Cunn.' The Jews put him to death. 'Shep.' Do not evade the question. Was he not 'the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world'? Was he not 'so delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, that the Jews, having taken him, by wicked hands crucified and slew him?' 'Cunn'. And what then? 'Shep'. Nothing; but that you are to answer, as well as I, for saying that God predetermined the death of this only innocent person.