1. We notice the fundamental mistake of many philosophers and divines in treating of moral exercises, or states of mind. Such exercises are very commonly represented as consisting wholly in excited states of the Sensibility. Thus Dr. Brown represents all moral exercises and states as consisting in emotions of a given character. One of the most distinguished Professors of Theology in this country laid down this proposition, as the basis of a course of lectures on Moral Philosophy, that “everything right or wrong in a moral agent, consists exclusively of right or wrong feelings”—feelings as distinguished from volitions as phenomena of Will. Now precisely the reverse of the above proposition is true, to wit: that nothing right or wrong, in a moral agent, consists in any states of the Sensibility irrespective of the action of the Will. Who would dare to say, when he has particular emotions, desires, or involuntary feelings, that the Moral law has no further claim upon him, that all its demands are fully met in those feelings? Who would dare to affirm, when he has any particular emotions, that all moral agents in existence are bound to have those identical feelings? If the demands of the Moral law are fully met in any states of the Sensibility—which would be true, if everything right or wrong, in moral agents, consists of right or wrong feelings—then all moral agents, at all times, and under all circumstances, are bound to have these same feelings. For what the law demands, at one time, it demands at all times. All the foundations of moral obligation are swept away by the theory under consideration.