re in nothing more
full, frequent, strong, and unequivocal, than in their injunctions on us
supremely to love and fear God, and to worship and serve him continually
with humble and grateful hearts; habitually regarding him as our
Benefactor, and Sovereign, and Father, and abounding in sentiments of
gratitude and loyalty, and respectful affection? Can he deny that these
positive precepts are rendered, if possible, still more clear, and their
authority still more binding, by illustrations and indirect
confirmations almost innumerable? And who then is that bold intruder
into the counsels of infinite wisdom, who, in palpable contempt of these
precise commands, thus illustrated also and confirmed, will dare to
maintain that, knowing the intention with which they were primarily
given and the ends they were ultimately designed to produce, he may
innocently neglect or violate their plain obligations; on the plea that
he conforms himself, though in a different manner, to this primary
intention, and produces, though by different means, these real and
ultimate ends?

This mode of arguing is one, with which, to say nothing of its insolent
prophaneness, the heart of man, prone to deceive himself and partial in
his own cause, is not fit to be trusted. Here again, more cautious and
jealous in the case of our worldly, than of our religious interests, we
readily discern the fallacy of this reasoning and protest against it,
when it is attempted to be introduced into the commerce of life. We see
clearly that it would afford the means of refining away by turns every
moral obligation. The adulterer might allow himself with a good
conscience, to violate the bed of his unsuspecting friend, whenever he
could assure himself that his crime would escape detection; for then,
where would be the evil and misery, the prevention of which was the real
ultimate object of the prohibition of adultery? The thief, in like
manner, and even the murderer, might find abundant room for the
_innocent_ exercise of their respective occupations, arguing from the
primary intention and real objects of the commands, by which theft and
murder were forbidden. There perhaps exists not a crime, to which this
crooked morality would not furnish some convenient opening.

But this miserable sophistry deserves not that we should spend so much
time in the refutation of it. To discern its fallaciousness, requires
not acuteness of understanding, so much as a little common honesty