fellow-subject, or a prince his lawful sovereign. The offence in the first case might only amount to an assault or defamation, but in the latter case to high treason. He then argues, that as sin is committed against God, an infinite being, it must, in an objective point of light, be an infinite evil....that a just God was displeased with sin, who, being infinite, his displeasure must be infinite also....and that as God was infinitely displeased, the evil of sin, at which he was offended, must have been infinite also.

The drift of this circuitous argument appears to be designed to prove, that the dignity of the being offended, and not the knowledge and ca pacity of the being offending, constitutes the scale or standard of criminality.

This is the extrinsic cause which he conceives capable of transmuting or converting finite crimes into infinite evils, which are so very offen, sive to the Deity that it creates in him an infinite degree of displeasure. To be eternally under the influence of infinite anger or displeasure, would certainly be a most unpleasant situation; and we humbly conceive, that if God could, strictly speaking, be made angry, provoked, or grieved by the conduct of us wretched mortals, he would not enjoy a moments quiet, but must

be much more miserable than the most unhappy of his creatures. But if we may be indulged in the use of a little carnal reason, we will venture to analyze this infinite principle, by which he supposes finite crimes to be convertable into infinite evils, to wit, the dignity of the being offended. If this be true, it is evident that an ac tion simply finite, acquires its infinity and malignity from an adventitious, extrinsic cause, of which the agent must, in many cases, be entirely ignorant. This must be the case with all idiots; and it is evident that the degree of criminality must vary with every variation of the degrees of knowledge of the persons who might commit the same crime. For example, supposé the best informed Clergyman, and the most ig norant savage, both to be guilty of incest, by co habiting with their own sisters; would any judicious person pronounce them equally criminal? Common sense declares they would not. And the apology which Christ made for the Jews, who were crucifying him, confirms the judg ment, when he prayed to his Father to forgive them, he offers this cogent reason why it would be equitable to forgive them, to wit, because they、 know not what they do! If the Jews had positively known that they were crucifying the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, would not Mr. Strebeck himself pronounce them more crimi

nal on account of their certain knowledge of the extent and malignity of the crime which they were perpetrating? And if they were infinitely criminal without this knowledge, would they not have been much more criminal if they had known it? If so, agreeably to the premises, the conclusion must be, that every sinner is infinitely criminal; but that some are infinitely more criminal than others.

But here we will rest this part of the subject at present, until Mr. Strebeck can furnish us with a well graduated scale, by which we may calculate the different degrees of infinity with as much precision as we now do yards, feet, and inches, by the common scale, beginning with Calvin's infants who bring their damnation out of their mothers' bellies, who are said in the Westminster Catechism to be born under the wrath and curse of God, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever! and all this evil brought upon them, not by their own agency, but by the transgression of a person which the Deity had ap pointed to act for them, near six thousand years ago. If it could possibly be either just or mer ciful to punish an infant eternally for the crime of another person, yet surely this imputed guilt must be the lowest on the scale of infinity. And

those who traduce and misrepresent the moral character of the Deity, should form the highest grade on the scale, as certainly their crime is infinitely more infinite than any other.

But common sense has yet another argument (sanctioned by the opinion of Bishop Tillotson) to combat this cruel, injurious doctrine, to wit, that the right which God hath in his creatures, is founded on the benefits he hath conferred on them, and the obligations they have to him on that account. Now there is none, who, because he has done a benefit, can have, by virtue of that, a right to do a greater evil than the good he has done amounts to; and we think it next to madness to doubt whether extreme and eternal misery be not a greater evil than simple being is a good."

All punishment which has not reformation. for its end, is mere cruelty and malice, which can never be in God, nor can he in reality hate any thing which he has made, or be subject to such weakness or impotence as to act arbitrarily, or out of spite, wrath, revenge, or any self-interest; and, consequently, whatever chastisement he inflicts, must be a mark of his love, in not suffering his creatures to remain in that

miserable state which is inseparable from sin and wickedness.

As God's infinite goodness appears in the sanctions as well as matter of his laws, so his infinite wisdom knows how to adjust the chastisement to the offence, that it may be exactly fitted to produce the desired amendment. Our greatest felicity consists in having such an impartial, disinterested judge, as well as legislator, that whether he punishes or rewards, he acts alike for our good; that being the end of all his laws, and consequently of the penalties as well as rewards, which make them laws: whereas our common systems of divinity represent him to be full of wrath and fury, ready to glut himself with revenge for the injuries he has suffered by the breach of his laws.

But we wish Mr. Strebeck to re-consider this subject candidly; for if every sin be an infinite evil, it is evident that all sins would be reduced to a state of equality; so that the boy who should steal a pigeon's egg, would be as crimínal as Judas Iscariot, or a person who might commit the unpardonable sin: for to assert in any case, where two things are infinite, that one may be vastly more infinite than the other, would be as absurd as if one should affirm, that

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