radiction, without
being suspected to do so. We may well ask, in relation to such things, why
God does not produce them, without being sensible of the absurdity of the
inquiry. The production of virtue, or true holiness, in the breast of a
moral agent, is a thing of this kind.(144)

This conducts us to our second position; namely, that if God should cause
virtue to exist in the breast of a moral agent, he would work a
contradiction. In other words, the production of virtue by any extraneous
agency, is one of those impossible conceits, those inherent absurdities,
which lie quite beyond the sphere of light in which the divine omnipotence
moves, and has no existence except in the outer darkness of a lawless
imagination, or in the dim regions of error, in which the true nature of
moral goodness has never been seen. It is absurd, we say, to suppose that
moral agents can be governed and controlled in any other way than by moral
means. All physical power is here out of the question. By physical power,
in connexion with wisdom and goodness, a moral agent may be created, and
endowed with the noblest attributes. By physical power, a moral agent may
be caused to glow with a _feeling_ of love, and armed with an uncommon
energy of will; but such effects, though produced by the power of God, are
not the virtue of the moral agent in whom they are produced. This
consists, not in the possession of moral powers, but in the proper and
obedient exercise of those powers.(145) If infinite wisdom, and goodness,
and power, should muster all the means and appliances in the universe, and
cause them to bear with united energy on a single mind, the effect
produced, however grand and beautiful, would not be the virtue of the
agent in whom it is produced. Nothing can be his virtue which is produced
by an extraneous agency. This is a dictate of the universal reason and
consciousness of mankind. It needs no metaphysical refinement for its
support, and no scholastic jargon for its illustration. On this broad
principle, then, which is so clearly deduced, not from the confined
darkness of the schools, but the open light of nature, we intend to take
our stand in opposition to the embattled ranks of atheism.

The argument of the atheist assumes, as we have seen, that a Being of
infinite power could easily prevent sin, and cause holiness to exist. It
assumes that it is possible, that it implies no contradiction, to create
an intelligent moral agent, and pla