6. In taking leave of the reader, I would simply say, that if he has distinctly apprehended the great doctrine designed to be established in this Work, and has happily come to an agreement with the author in respect to it, the following hallowed impression has been left very distinctly upon his mind. While he finds himself in a state of profound and most pleasing dependence upon the Author of his being, in the Holy of Holies of the inner sanctuary of his mind, one idea, the great over-shadowing idea of the human Intelligence, has been fully sanctified—the idea of duty, of moral obligation. With the consciousness of Liberty, that idea must be to the mind an omnipresent reality. From it we can never escape and in all states, and in all worlds, it must and will be to us, as a guardian angel, or an avenging fiend. But one thing remains, and that is, through the grace proffered in the Remedial System, to “live and move, and have our being,” in harmony with that idea, thus securing everlasting “quietness and assurance” in the sanctuary of our minds, and ever enduring peace and protection under, the over-shadowing perfections of the Author of our existence, and amid all the arrangements and movements of his eternal government.

^[1] See Upham on the Will, pp. 32-35.

^[2] The above is a perfectly correct statement of the famous distinction between natural and moral ability made by Necessitarians. The sinner is under obligation to do right, they say, because he might do what is required of him, if he chose to do it. He has, therefore, natural but not moral power to obedience. But the choice which the sinner wants, the absence of which constitutes his moral inability, is the very thing required of him. When, therefore, the Necessitarian says, that the sinner is under obligation to obey, because he might obey if he chose to do it, the real meaning is, that the sinner is under obligation to obedience, because if he should choose to obey he would choose to obey. In other words he is under obligation to obedience, because, if he did obey, he would obey.