revented by especial grace, which is the privilege of
only a small proportion of them, and at the same time affixing on their
delinquency _a doom of which it is infinitely beyond the highest
archangel's faculty to apprehend a thousandth part of the horror_!"(199)

Now, granting the premises, we hold this argument to be unanswerable and
conclusive. But is it not wonderful that it did not occur to so acute a
mind as Foster's, that the same premises would furnish a valid argument
against the justice of all punishment, as well as against the justice of
eternal punishments? Surely, if the utter inability of man to do good
without divine grace is any extenuation, when such grace is not given, it
is an entire and perfect exoneration. It is either this, or it is nothing.
Such are the inevitable inconsistencies of the best thinkers, when the
feelings of the heart are at war with the notions of the head. Instead of
analyzing this awful subject, and tracing it down to its fundamental
principles, upon which his reason might have reposed with a calm and
immovable satisfaction, Foster seems to have permitted his great mind to
take root in a creed of man's devising, and then to be swayed by the gusts
and counter-blasts of passion. Believing that man "must go wrong," that
nature and circumstances impose this dire necessity upon him, his
benevolence could not contemplate an eternity of torments as due to such
inevitable sin. It was repelled by "the infinite horror of the tenet." On
the other hand, his abhorrence of evil, and sense of justice, shrank with
equal violence from the idea that all punishment is unjust; and hence he
could say, "Far be it from us to make light of the demerit of sin, and to
remonstrate with the Supreme Judge against a _severe chastisement_." Thus
did his great mind, instead of resting upon truth, perpetually hang in a
state of suspense and vacillation between the noblest feelings of his
heart and the darkest errors of his creed.

Others, who have adopted the same creed, have endeavoured to extricate
themselves from the dilemma in which Foster found himself, not by denying
the eternity of future punishments, but by inventing a very nice
distinction between the natural and moral inability of man. "He can obey
the law," say they, "_if he will_;" all that "he wants is the will." All
his natural faculties are complete; only let him will aright, and he is
safe. But, after all, the question still remains, How is he to g