nder civil despotism, the old Roman
manhood had entirely died out on its native soil, while
ecclesiastical corruption rendered the nobler idea of Christian
manhood effete; and then the highest type of manhood that remained
was the culture of those refined sensibilities, those ornamental
arts, and that keen sense of the beautiful, in which Italy as far
surpassed other lands, as it was for centuries inferior to them in
physical bravery and in moral rectitude.

8 It is obviously on this ground alone that we can affirm moral
attributes of the Supreme Being. When we say that he is perfectly
just, pure, holy, beneficent, we recognize a standard of judgment
logically independent of his nature. We mean that the fitness which
the human conscience recognizes as its only standard of right, is
the law which he has elected for his own administration of the
universe. Could we conceive of omnipotence not recognizing this law,
the decrees and acts of such a being would not be necessarily right.
Omnipotence cannot make that which is fitting wrong, or that which
is unfitting right. God's decrees and acts are not right because
they are his, but his because they are right.

9 From _cardo_, a hinge.

10 It is virtually Cicero's division in the _De Officiis_.

11 The points at issue with regard to sabbatical observance hardly
belong to an elementary treatise on ethics. I ought not, however, to
leave any doubt as to my own opinion. I believe, then, the rest of
the Sabbath a necessity of man's constitution, physical and mental,
of that of the beasts subservient to his use, and, in some measure,
even of the inanimate agents under his control, while the
sequestration of the day from the course of ordinary life is equally
a moral and religious necessity. The weekly Sabbath I regard as a
dictate of natural piety, and a primeval institution, re-enacted,
not established, by Moses, and sanctioned by our Saviour when he
refers to the Decalogue as a compend of moral duty, as also in
various other forms and ways. As to modes of sabbatical observance,
the rigid abstinences and austerities once common in New England
were derived from the Mosaic ceremonial law, and have no sanction
either in the New Testament or in the habits of the early
Christians.