Lecture V: the doctrines of rights applied to government.
- Government, human as well as Divine, is a necessity of man's fallen condition -- all men concur in this -- man did not originate government: he has only modified the form -- the legitimate objects of government, and the means which it employs to effect these objects -- the logical inferences: 1. although he has the power, he has no right to do wrong; 2. as a fallen being, he is, without a government over him, liable to lose the power of self-control -- what are the rights of man: 1. in a state of infancy; 2. in a state of maturity; and, 3. in a savage or uncivilized state -- civil government is not founded on a concession of rights.
philosophers, it seems to me, strangely overlook the tendency of man's fall to modify the operation of the laws of mind; and those who admit the fall still overlook this fact, that the depravity of man's nature was the result of deprivation, and not the infusion of an evil principle as an attribute of his nature. But it is not with the theology of this subject that we are now dealing. The fact that, as a fallen being, he was deprived of the immediate
