of the whole world by Jesus Christ, and the agency of the Holy Spirit in effecting our sanctification, on the authority of revelation alone, shrink nevertheless very frequently from admitting either that this Atonement can be rendered available to us, or this Sanctification imparted, except in ways which may be perceived to improve faith and holiness. What relates to God, they can believe and feel to be beyond their comprehension; but what relates to themselves, and falls apparently under the full cognisance of Experience, they cannot understand except in such a way as is verified by Experience.

Thus, without entering at present on the question, whether such or such particular opinions about the unseen order of things are borne out by sufficient positive evidence, it seems that Experience, or, to use the Scripture phrase, Sight, opposes greater difficulties to the reception of some than others; and the greatest of all to those that bear upon our present condition, and the means by which the graces, promised in revealed religion, are conveyed

to us.

Now the importance of observing these various shades of opposition, between Sight and Faith, arises from the circumstance, [already noticed] that, wherever this opposition exists in any degree, we are likely to be in some degree prejudiced judges of the evidence on the side of Faith, and of the objection raised by Sight; we are likely to underrate the one and overrate the other, to neglect the one and dwell on the other; in short, to deny

our reason fair play in deciding the balance: and the greater the opposition is in any case, the greater is likely to be our prejudice; to such a degree that, unless we take particular care to guard against it, we shall be apt to take many important questions entirely for granted, without giving a moment's attention to what can be said upon them. That the generality of careless people are in the habit of judging in this way on almost all religious questions, is but too evident: but persons who know that they are not careless are not on this eccount to feel secure of themselves. Whether they are conscious of it or not, they are all under a strong temptation, which probably has influenced them the more, the less they have observed it: and this temptation assumes a great variety of shapes according to the different turns of mind it acts upon. It urges some people to levity and profaneness; but it is not only those who jest at what they disbelieve, that disbelieve under its influence. It often appears under a grave and stately guise, putting forward the honour of God and the purity of religion as the ends to be attained by following it; and not unfrequently appeals to strong religious feelings, making them its instruments of seduction'. *Many a goodly monument of ancient piety, many a sacred relic of Saint or Martyr, has been insulted and destroyed under the colours of religious zeal; nay I can

1

[The passage between asterisks has a line across it in the M.S., as if it broke the course of the paragraph.]

believe that one at least of the two glorious and ever-blessed Martyrs whom the Reformed Church of England has given to God, was the victim of a misguided dread of superstition; and that even the perilous and shocking step of denying the Godhead of our Blessed Lord has by some persons been taken under the full conviction that they were flying from idolatry.* Nothing is more certain than that a man may think himself to be actuated by a grave love of Truth, or a zeal of Godliness, while in fact he is taking no rational step to attain the one or the other, but is urged on by a mere prejudice, which he retains by refusing to examine it.

And thus, in the case before us, many a man, who has suspected any thing rather than that he was acting irreligiously or unphilosophically, has, under the blind influence of a temptation to prefer Sight to Faith, believed some things and disbelieved others, equally without examination, and having assumed from the first that they did not require it.

CHAPTER III.

UNREASONABLENESS OF RATIONALISM1.

Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.

§1. Ecclesiastical Questions not necessarily unspiritual. MANY serious persons who read and think much on the subject of religion, are nevertheless accustomed to regard questions connected immediately with the Church as undeserving any large share of their attention. Discussions, for instance, respecting the manner in which a Christian community should be governed, or respecting the reasons for joining ourselves to one rather than another, appear to them rather political than religious; or at any rate so confined to the mere externals of religion as to divert the thoughts from what is inward and spiritual. It is common to hear this whole class of subjects grouped together under the name "matters of Discipline," and so contrasted with "matters of Doctrine," as obviously of minor importance, if

1

[i. e. the System of Rationalism has no foundation in Reason, i. e. in Experience. Hence all the Sections are negative: "Ecclesiastical questions not necessarily unspiritual, &c.”]

of

any. Indeed, a disposition to lay stress on them is not unfrequently regarded as a proof of a worldly mind; and some are even found, who think that ignorance of what has been alleged, on any side of the questions that have arisen out of them, is a positive good. Now in all this there is much of real though mistaken good feeling. The views entertained by such persons would be perfectly just, if there was no more in the question above spoken of than the world generally supposes.

If, when so much is said to prove that the Primitive Church was governed by Bishops and not by Presbyters, nothing more was intended than to show that primitive precedent was in favour of the Episcopal form of Church government ;-in this case, few discussions could be more unedifying to the practical Christian. It is obvious to common sense, that the present circumstances of Christian communities are so different from what they were in the Apostolic times, that the very same reasons which recommended one form of government then, may recommend an opposite form now; and that to insist on imitating the Apostolic Church in these days, in points where no particular reason can be assigned for imitating it, is a mere nicety, a piece of antiquarianism. If the Episcopal question terminated in ascertaining whether Episcopacy was conformable to Apostolical practice, the settlement of it one way or another could be of little consequence to us. We have changed many Apostolical prac

tices. We do not consider ourselves bound to a