impossible things, there can obviously be no right on the part of the promisee to demand a fulfilment. It is a contradiction in terms that he can have a right to make his neighbour do wrong, and a flagrant absurdity that a creature can exact from his fellow what even God cannot enjoin. But while there is no injustice in the violation of these promises, there is enormous fraud in making them, when the unlawfulness and impossibility are known at the time. The man shows himself reckless of truth and reckless of his neighbour's right. He manifests a contempt of veracity and justice. He is guilty of the same species of crime, as he who solemnly pretends to transfer the property of another, or who knowingly circulates counterfeit coin, or who forges a note or a bill of exchange. As in other cases the falsehood and fraud consist in breaking, here they consist in making the promise. The crime is the same, but it dates from a different point. The same eternal principles of right which proclaim as with a voice of thunder-thou shalt keep all real In promises, just as solemnly command, thou shalt make no unlawful engagements. cases in which the unlawfulness and impossibility were not known at the time of making the promise, it may be fairly presumed, that the promise was tacitly conditioned by them, and though there may be rashness, there is nothing of fraud in engagements made upon mistake. The implied condition has failed and the promise is at an end. Before dismissing the subject of promises, there are two questions of casuistry which deserve a moment's consideration, and which may be regarded as a test of the principles we have maintained. The first is, whether extorted promises are binding? The second, whether, when a promise proceeds upon an unlawful condition, and the condition has been fulfilled, the promise is to be kept? That is, whether there can ever be a real promise which is unlawfully conditioned ? 1. As to extorted promises, the only point to be settled is the subjective condition of the agent. * Did he voluntarily signify and did he know the import of the signs he employed? If he was in such a state of agitation and alarm, that he could not command the use of his faculties; if, in other words, he was deprived, for the time, of the essential elements of moral agency, he could no more be responsible for his acts than an idiot or a lunatic. But if he knew what he was doing, no violence of fear, no external pressure can exempt him from responsibility. The act was voluntary, though not chosen for itself. The man was in circumstances which led him to prefer it as the least of two evils. He, therefore, in a moral sense deliberately promised, and the obligation is the same as in all other cases. The true security against being drawn into an engagement, which we are subsequently reluctant to perform, is that firm reliance upon the providence of God which enables us to look upon danger with contempt, * See on this subject, besides the common treatises, Taylor's Rule of Conscience, book iv., chap i., rule 7. or to regard nothing as a danger which does not shake our claim upon the Divine protection. Let the heart be established by confidence in Him, and then there is no ground for the fear of evil tidings. The preservation of integrity should be superior to all other considerations, and it is a miserable confession of weakness, that the love of life or limb has been stronger than the love of virtue. No Christian man should ever be prevailed on by the servile motive of fear, to make engagements which his sense of propriety condemns. Why should he fear who has the arms of the Almighty to sustain him? What shield like that of a good conscience and the fa vour of God? Of all men the true Chris tian should exemplify the description of the heathen poet : Justum ac tenacem propositi virum Non civium ardor prava jubentium, Non vultus instantis tyranni Mente quatit solida neque Auster Impavidum ferient ruinæ. Those circumstances in which cowardice yields and puts in the plea of extortion, constitute the occasions on which the Christian hero may illustrate the magnanimity of his principles. Virtue becomes awful when it subordinates to itself the whole external world. A good man struggling with the storms of fate, unshaken in his allegiance to God, and steady in his purpose never to be seduced into wrong, is the noblest spectacle which the earth can present. There is something unutterably grand in the moral attitude of him, who, with his eye fixed upon the favour of God, rises superior to earth and hell, and amid the wrecks of a thousand barks around him steers his course with steadiness and peace. 2. To the other question concerning the effect of an unlawful condition upon the validity of a promise, I am constrained to return a very different answer from that which has been given by most recent writers whom I have been able to consult.* Paley * I am gratified in being able to state that Dr. Adams, late |