Now I had one of those minds which reduce their views to system, or to their fundamental principle. My starting-point, my fundamental principle was false, and therefore my whole system or theory of the universe was false. This once discovered, I necessarily embraced the opposing principle, and as necessarily embraced it in all its legitimate consequences. I never was so constituted as to be able to strike a balance between truth and falsehood, or to accept a principle and deny its consequences. In matters of practice, I can understand, where no principle is sacrificed, what are called compromises, and I have never needed to be told that true prudence usually forbids us to push matters to extremes. When we act, we must consider the practicable, and the expedient, as far as principle leaves us any discretionary power; but in asserting principles, in the question between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, I have always felt it necessary to be on one side or the other. It ought not therefore to be considered strange that, forced by Mr. Merton and my own serious reflections to deny that Satan is God, I should swing round to the other extreme, and assert that God is God; or that, starting from this bold proposition as a first principle, I should adjust, or endeavor to adjust my whole order of thought to it. I am aware that my having done so will, with the mass of my countrymen, bring reproach upon my memory, and induce some who may cherish a regard for me to attempt to apologize for my want of inconsistency and incoherency; but, happily, the praises or the censures of men cannot affect me any longer, and I shall soon be where they cannot reach me.