his posterity suffer the same. Adam was punished, and his descendants only suffer, in the same manner as it is said, that God visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, i. e. the fathers are punished in the sufferings of their children. Now betwixt punishment and suffering, there is a material distinction. Punishment always supposes guilt in the object; whereas sufferings only imply that the sufferer is in a state of trial; and what is there endured is intended to refine the soul, to improve its virtue, and to increase its final reward.

14. That an innocent man should be punished is most unjust, because in that man there is no just foundation of punishment. But that an innocent man should suffer is not unjust, because sufferings, as they are experiments and trials of virtue, tend to his improvement, and if improved will be productive of his greater felicity at last. This is the uniform doctrine of scripture; our light afflictions which are but for a moment, vork out for us a far more exceeding, and an eternal weight of glory.

15. But is it not unjust that children should be subjected to suffering on account of their father's transgres

sion? By no means. Because children, as such, have no rights. Where there is no right, there can be no alienation of right, and where there is no alienation of of right, there can be no injustice; as injustice consists in the deprivation of a just right, without the consent or forfeiture of the proprietor. Thus for instance, the present case. God promised to Adam perpetual existence upon condition of perpetual obedience. Now had Adam continued perpetually obedient to the divine command, and thus secured immortality to himself in consequence of the divine veracity, it by no means follows, that Adam's children had any claim of

right to immortality, because immortality was

Adam a gift of God; a gift personal, not heritable; and to the gifts of God no creature has any right previous to the promise or donation. If then whilst Adam was obedient, and of consequence immortal, his posterity had no right to immortality, much less can they plead any, when their father by disobedience had forfeited immortality. Now if God recompense temporary sufferings duly improved with eternal rewards, who shall complain of injustice in him, because we suffer not are punished for Adam's sin.

PART IV.

THE DOCTRINE OF FAITH IN GENERAL EXAMINED.

1. Faith in general is any kind of persuasion, proceeding from testimony, concerning any thing whatever that is not the immediate object of our own knowledge, of our own consciousness or of our own senses. Whatever truths we hold upon the evidence of sense or consciousness, or by necessary consequences legitimately deduced, these truths we know. On the other hand, whatever truths we derive from any other source, be it from the relation of others, or by rational deductions from their depositions, these truths we believe. The result of the former principles is knowledge, the effect of the latter is faith. Religious knowledge is too seldom distinguished from religious faith; which is one great cause why the subject of faith is so often confused and mis

understood.

Faith in the very nature of it implies some sort of doubt, because it is an assent of the mind to things we do not certainly know; for if we knew them there would be an end of faith; as the apostle argues, What a man seeth why doth he yet hope for?

2. Faith then is an assent of the mind to the truth of any proposition. Of this assent there are various degrees, from that conviction which is produced by actual certainty, to that which rests only on some faint and distant probability. Of the truth of those things, which are within the cognisance of the senses, the conviction is firm and undoubting. There are likewise many truths which are capable of actual demonstration, or of which the reality may be made so palpable to our perceptions, that we can no more refuse our assent to them, than we can to the truth of our own existence. Of this kind are those truths which are called mathematical, and of which, when the terms are understood, and the several prepositions from which they result are clearly and perspicuously explained, and as it were brought home to the understanding, the belief amounts to certainty.