29 January–4 February 1827

But now comes the analysis of this shallow philosophy. He that was sinless before declines from his integrity. He says, I have sinned ; But I live; I am in health; I shall not sin again; and how am I the worse ? and no man shall know it. Vain, blind man ! alas ! the laws which he spurned, the laws of the moral Universe have taken hold on him and assert their insulted su- premacy. He thought himself too insignificant to provoke the animadversion of the Most High and that he might sin unnoticed in the immen- sity of God's government. But God has not so poorly framed the economy of his administration. He devised no fallible police, no contingent com- pensations. He secured the execution of his ever- lasting laws by committing to every moral being the supervision of its own character, by mak- ing every moral being the unrelenting, inex- orable punisher of Its own delinquency. In the hour when he sinned, that hour his own fate avenged on him the majesty of the laws he had broken.