the certainty and the merit of our faith, its certainty, as resting on a foundation no less firm, though far less compulsive, than the evidence of sense itself; its merit, as a mixed act of the understanding and of the will of the understanding, deducing its conclusions from the surest premises of the will, submitting itself to the best of motives. Our faith therefore will appear to be an act in which the moral qualities of the mind are no less active than its reason

ing faculties ; and upon this account, it may claim a moral merit of which the involuntary assent of understanding present to sense or to necessary proof must ever be divested.

What then is the ground upon which the faith of the generality of Christians in the present ages is built, who all believe what they have not seen? I say, of the generality of Christians; for whatever it may be which gives faith its merit in the sight of God, it is surely to be looked for not in any thing peculiar to the faith of the learned, but in the common faith of the plain illiterate believer. What then is the ground of

his conviction? Is it the historical evidence of the facts recorded in the gospels? Perhaps no facts of an equal antiquity may boast an historical evidence equally complete; and without some degree of this evidence there could be no faith: Yet it is but a branch of the proof, and, if I mistake not, far from the most considerable part; for the whole of this evidence lies open-but to a small proportion of the Christian world: It is such as many true believers, many whose names are written in the book of life, have neither the leisure nor the light to scrutinize so as to receive from this alone a sufficient conviction; In the degree in which it may be supposed to strike the generality of believers, it seems to be that which may rather finish a proof begun in other principles than make by itself an entire demonstration.

What then is that which, in connexion with that portion of the historical evidence which common men may be supposed to perceive, affords to them a rational ground of conviction? Is it the completion of prophecy? This itself must have its proof

from history. To those who live when the things predicted come to pass, the original delivery of the prophecy is a matter to be proved by historical evidence: To those who live after the things predicted are come to pass, both the delivery of the prophecy and the events in which it is supposed to be verified are points of history; and moreover, by the figured language of prophecy, the evidence which it affords is of all the most removed from popular. apprehension. What then is the great foundation of proof to those who are little read in history, and are ill qualified to decypher prophecy, and compare it with the records of mankind? Plainly this, which the learned and the ignorant may equally comprehend, - the intrinsic excellence of the doctrine, and the purity of the precept; a doctrine which conveys to the rudest understanding just and exalted notions of the Divine perfections; exacts a worship purged of all hypocrisy and superstition the most adapted to the nature of him who offers the most worthy, if aught may be worthy, of the Being that accepts it; prescribes the most rational duties things intrinsically

the best, and the most conducive to private and to public good; proposes rewards adequate to the vast desires and capacities of the rational soul; promises mercy to infirmity, without indulgence to vice; holds out pardon to the penitent offender, in that particular way which secures to a frail imperfect race the blessings of a mild government, and secures to the majesty of the Universal Governor all the useful ends of punishment; and builds this scheme of redemption on a history of man and Providence of man's original corruption, and the various interpositions of Providence for

his gradual recovery, which clears up many perplexing questions concerning the origin of evil, the unequal distribution of present happiness and misery, and the disadvantages on the side of virtue in this constitution of things, which seem inexplicable upon any other principles..

This excellence of the Christian doctrine considered in itself, as without it no external evidence of revelation could be sufficient, so it gives to those who are qualified to perceive it that internal probability to the

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whole scheme, that the external evidence, in that proportion of it in which it may supposed to be understood by common men, may be well allowed to complete the proof. This, I am persuaded, is the consideration that chiefly weighs with those who are quite unable to collect and unite for themselves the scattered parts of that multifarious proof which history and prophecy afford.

I would not be understood to disparage the proof of revelation from historical evidence or from prophecy: When I speak of that part of it which lies within the reach of unlettered men as small, I speak of it with reference to its whole. I am satisfied, that whoever is qualified to take a view of but one half, or a much less proportion, of the proof of that kind which is now extant in the world, will be overpowered with the force of it. Some there will always be who will profit by this proof, and will be curious to seek after it; and mankind in general will be advantaged by their lights. But of those in any one age of the world who may be capable of re