Give me leave to tell you, that, even setting God aside (whom those that acknowledge him will confess to be incomprehensible), I fear we men have too good a conceit of ourselves, when we think that no such thing can have an existence, or, at least, a nature or being, as we are not able to comprehend.'

There is no necessity that intelligibility to a human understanding should be necessary to the truth or existence of a thing; for many discern things that may not be perceptible to others: as no attention or application of the organ (or the nose) will enable a man to perceive the effluvia expiring from the stale footsteps of a hunted and unseen hare or deer, though hounds, and especially bloodhounds, will have a vivid perception of such odours.2

Were men in their other affairs, or in ordinary converse, so diffident to plain testimony, as some do seem to be in these matters concerning religion, they would soon find great inconveniencies to proceed thence; their business would stick, their conversation would be distasteful, they would be much more offensive, and no less ridiculous, than the most credulous fool in the world.3

Nothing can destroy the evidence of testimony in any case but a proof or probability that persons are not competent judges of the facts to which they give testimony, or that they are actually under

1 Boyle, vi. 694. (4to ed.)

3 Barrow, vol. ii. 123. fol. Serm. ix.

2 Ibid.

some indirect influence in giving it in such particular case.'

The two grand requisites of a witness are the knowledge he has of the things he delivers, and his faithfulness in truly delivering what he knows.

The most rational men scruple not to believe, upon competent testimony, many things whose truth did not appear to them by the consideration of the nature of the things themselves; nay, though what is thus believed upon testimony be so strange, and, setting aside that testimony, would seem so irrational that, antecedently to that testimony, the things at last admitted as truths were actually rejected as errors, or judged altogether unfit to be believed.2

We ought to believe divers things upon the information of experience, which, without that information, we should judge unfit to be believed, or, antecedently to it, did actually judge contrary to reason.

If experience did not both inform and certify us, who would believe that a light black powder should be able, being duly managed, to throw down stone walls, blow up whole castles, and rocks themselves, and do those other stupendous things which we see actually performed by gunpowder ?3

That believing, which is the duty of a Christian, is not, in the strict sense of the word, a bare assent of the understanding; but it signifies, in the moral sense, that good disposition of the mind and will by which a man is disposed to attend to and examine

1 Butler, Anal. 343. 2 Boyle, v. 529.

3 Ibid. v.

526. (4to ed.)

impartially, to consider and receive willingly, what, upon due inquiry, he shall find to be the will of God, not carelessly and credulously, but upon sober reason and proper evidence. And so likewise, on the contrary, unbelief in Scripture does not signify disbelieving what wants just and sufficient proof; but it always means, either carelessly and negligently rejecting, without inquiry and without reason, or else rejecting, wilfully and obstinately, through the love of sin and vice.1

Remember that, in the examination of every great and comprehensive plan. such as that of Christianity, difficulties may be expected to occur; and that reasonable evidence is not to be rejected, because the nature of our present state only allows us to know" in part," and to see "through a glass darkly."

May not one duty of a Christian consist in the careful, honest investigation of the principles of his faith, without founding them merely upon the authority of others? Supposing Christianity to have been at first promulgated in such a manner that no doubt or difficulty could possibly have arisen in men's minds upon the subject, where would have been the merit of believing? To ask why Christianity was not first established in the most unquestionable manner, is much as if we were to ask why we are such beings as we are—why we are not, at once, born to a state of perfect bliss.2

1 Clarke, Serm. iv. vol. iii.

2 C.; and see Butler, Anal.

The question concerning the truth of Christianity is, whether it be a real revelation, not whether it be attended with every circumstance we should have looked for. Besides, different men would have different opinions as to these circumstances."

It is but too easy to observe, that many who complain of the obscurity of several points of the Christian Religion are such as will not give themselves the trouble of such a serious application of mind as is, for the most part, necessary to the successful study of difficult truths.3

It would seem to be the will of God that those things which he would have us believe, so that that faith should be accepted from us as obedience, should not so evidently appear as those things we perceive by our senses, and by demonstration; so that the Gospel is, as it were, a touchstone to try men's honest intentions by.4

As to miracles. Why should it be impossible for him who created to re-produce? Why, for him who gave health, and suffered sickness, blindness, and other infirmities to exist, to restore to health the sufferer, or the dead to life?"

"Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?""

Indeed, a presumption against miracles entirely seems little less than a presumption against the omnipotence of God.

1 Butler, Anal. 240.

2 C. 3 Boyle, vi. 690. (4to. ed.)

4 Grotius, Truth of the Christian Religion (Dr. Clarke's trans.), 109.

5 C.

6 Acts, xxvi. 8.

Miracles must not be compared to common natural events, or to events which, though uncommon, are similar to what we daily experience, but to the extraordionary phenomena of nature. And then the presumption will be between the presumption against miracles, and the presumption against such uncommon appearances, suppose, as comets. And, before any one can determine whether there be any peculiar presumption against miracles more than against other extraordinary things, he must consider what, upon first hearing, would be the presumption against the last mentioned appearances to a person acquainted only with the daily, monthly, and annual course of nature.'

Testimony does just as much in the case of miracles as of common events, that is, it discloses to us the conviction of another's mind. Now this conviction, in the case of miracles, requires a cause, in explanation, as much as in every other; and if the circumstances be such that it could not have sprung up and been established but by the reality of the alleged miracle, then that great and fundamental principle of human belief, namely, that every effect must have a cause, compels us to admit the miracle.2

There is even a particular argument in favour of the miraculous part of the Scripture history from

1 Butler, Anal. 231.

2 Channing, On the Evidences of the Christian Religion, 207. See Works, ed. 1829.