CONTENTS. INTELLECTUAL CAUSES. PAGE 1. Natural Religion.-2. Lord Byron.-3. Fornication.-4. Uni- PART THE FIRST. CHAPTER I. MISCONCEPTIONS AS TO THE nature OF THE PROOF IN RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS. UNDER this head, I shall speak almost exclusively in the words of others, for I confess myself unable to express the same things so well. The object of this chapter is, as its title designates, to discuss the kind of proof on which we are, in reason bound to act, in questions of a religious nature. And the following passage, from a deeply tried and admirable writer, will carry us at once into the matter, and a solution of it. "My mind found rest in that kind of conviction, which belongs particularly to moral subjects; and seems to depend on an intuitive B perception of the truth through broken clouds of doubt, which it is not in the power of mortal man completely to dispel. Let no one suppose that I allude to either mysterious or enthusiastic feelings: I speak of conviction prepared by examination. But, any man accustomed to observe the workings of the mind, will agree, that conviction, in intricate moral questions, comes finally in the shape of internal feeling. A perception perfectly distinct from syllogistic reasoning, but which exerts the strongest power over our moral nature. Such perception of the truth, is, indeed, the spring of our most important actions, the common bond of social life, the ground of retributive justice, the parent of all human laws. Yet it is inseparable from more or less doubt: for doubtless conviction is only to be found about objects of sense, or those abstract creations of the mind, pure number and dimension, which employ the ingenuity of mathematicians."* * Blanco White's Internal Evidence against Cath. p. 27. Incalculable harm is done by well-meaning religious The species of conviction, so well described in the foregoing, as the only attainable kind in subjects of an historical and moral nature, is, by writers on this department of human knowledge, usually denominated, that of probable evidence. Not to imply as the profound Dugald Stewart so well observes" Not to imply any deficiency in the proof, but only to mark the particular nature of that proof, as contradistinguished from other species of evidence. It is opposed, not to what is certain, but to what admits of being demonstrated after persons overlooking this, and insisting, with warmth, upon the precise degree of conviction each person ought to feel, upon every point which they propose. Faith, is not sight, to however high a degree it may attain. The Scriptures never assert it to be so; though some intemperate expounders have seemed to imply this; (for instance, the violent charge of the Calvinist Travers, against the truly learned Hooker).-Hooker's Works, vol. iii). See, there also, Hooker's memorable reply (sec. 9), the farthest removed from that injurious, unphilosophical, and most unscriptural system which prevails with some, of reviling and speaking contemptuously of others, who have not attained to some one particular standard of conviction, on every subject with themselves. |