It is plain these clauses are to be considered as simply declarative on scriptural grounds of the neceffity both of faith and of good works to salvation; and at the same time as leaving all men to that infinite mercy, and those ineftimable merits, which are fully adequate to the pardon and atonement of fins, failings, ignorances, and errors of integrity. (c) Which few confiderations will, I apprehend, fairly deliver the Creed before us from the reproach of uncharitableness. With regard to the several articles of which it consists, I trust, they will be found, in the course of these difquifitions, to have foundation in a fully competent authority; and in the mean time I shall endeavour to remove one general prejudice against them, and to create rather a prepofsession in their favour, by evincing, that their acknowleged mysteriousness and incomprehensibility does by no means unqualify them for our affent. "Man is as fuch a rational creature;" and as a rational creature he is a believing one too. We can no more conceive him to be without without belief, than without sense, thought, or reflection. The Atheist who says in his heart, as well as with his lips, there is no God, believes there is none. He protests against the supposed folly, or extravagance of the fundamental article of all religion; and on the strength of false conclufions, resolves every thing into a concourse of atoms fortuitoufly uniting; or into the operation of an unintelligent principle which we call nature; or, in other words, into an everlasting succession of causes and effects. It is possible for a man to deny his own existence, or that there is any such thing as motion. We have heard of instances of this fort; though properly they are instances, not of false perfuafion, but of infanity. (d) Still man is a rational creature, whether he reasons well or ill; and whether, in consequence of fuch reasoning, his faith be well or ill grounded. It is certain we know little or nothing by intuition. The mind yields assent to many mysterious truths by forming a very small chain of deductions; such as the immenfity of space, the infinite progreffion of number, and eternity, as well a parte parte ante as a parte poft. "Space and duration, "says an ingenious author, are mysterious "abyssesin which our thoughts are confound"ed with demonftrable propositions, to all " sense and reafson, flatly contradictory to one " another. Any two points of time, though ne"ver sodistant, are each of them exactly in the " middle of eternity. The remotest points of "space that can be imagined are, each of them, " precisely in the centre of infinite space." * In fact, we have no stronger, or more adequate conception of immenfity than of omnipresence; we have no clearer idea of the existence of SOMETHING from all eternity than we have of eternal generation. Faith, it is true, strictly speaking, has reference to religion only; † but, I hope, a truth or a myftery is not inadmissible purely on account of its respecting practice, or implying obligation. This will readily be granted even by infidels who deny the truths of Revelation; and much more by such Christians as have * See Deism Revealed. Vol. 2. p. 145. † See Note at p. 3 of Howes's Discourse on the abuse of the Talent of Disputation in Religion. &c. called called into debate particular points of that Revelation, to which in general they profess to subscribe. It is well worth remarking that Deists and Heretics never fail to attack the profefsed atheist with fuch reasonings, as, if pursued through their just consequences, may fairly and successfully be enforced upon themselves. For if he affects to decry the fundamental principle of all religion, the Being of a God, on account of the pretended inconceivableness of it, will not they observe, in order to confute him, that, unless a more complete, a more uniform, and intelligible system could be built on the ruins of this great article, such his exception can have no weight? And this is the very reafoning we urge against the principles both of deists and heretics. With the professed atheist I shall no farther concern myself; but defire to observe, that deists and heretics of all denominations are agreed with us in one general point, the acknowlegement of the existence of God, and confequently the incomprehensibleness of the Divine nature, attributes, and operations. The primary notion which the human mind frames of God is this general and complex, yet negative idea of incomprehensibleness. There is a certain preeminence, if I may so call it, in the Divine essence, &c. which utterly precludes investigation. But if so, all mysteries, whether natural or religious, whether relative, e. g. to the extenfion of space, &c. or to the nature of the Deity; all these, if confidered purely as mysteries, will stand upon a level in point of credibility. And let a revelation be supposed, all adventitious truths introduced thereby will be fixed upon the fame foot; because faith cannot have a stronger foundation in human reason than in divine authority. This is granted without difficulty; but then as the deist denies the authenticity of those writings which we affirm to contain such revelation, so the heretic disputes the sense and scope of them. The question therefore is, whether the opinion of the one, and the unbelief of the other, is respectively the result of judgment, or of passion; of conviction, or of pride; of impartial enquiry, or of unwillingness to submit the understanding of man to the |