ceiving the full benefit of this proof, I question whether the number be greater than of those in the apostolic age who were in a situation to receive the benefit of ocular demonstration. And I would endeavour to ascertain what common ground of conviction there may be for all men, of which the ignorant and the learned may equally take advantage; and I took this inquiry, in order to discover wherein that merit of faith consists which may entitle to the blessing pronounced in the text and in various other parts of Scripture; for whatever that may be from which true faith derives the merit, we are undoubtedly to look for it not in any thing peculiar to the faith of the learned, but in the common faith of the plain illiterate believer. Now, the ground of his conviction, that which gives force and vigour to whatever else of the evidence may come within his view, is evidently his sense and consciousness of the excellence of the gospel doctrine. This is an evidence which is felt no doubt in its full force by many a man who can hold no argument about the nature of its certainty- with him who holds the plough or tends the loom, who hath

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never been sufficiently at leisure from the laborious occupations of necessitous life to speculate upon moral truth and beauty in the abstract; for a quick discernment and a truth of taste in religious subjects proceed not from that subtilty or refinement of the understanding by which men are qualified to figure in the arts of rhetoric and disputation, but from the moral qualities of the heart. A devout and honest mind refers the doctrines and precepts of religion to that exemplar of the good and the fair which it carries about within itself in its own feelings By their agreement with this, it understands their excellence: Understanding their excellence, it is disposed to embrace them and to obey them; and in this disposition listens with candour to the external evidence. It may seem, that by -reducing faith to these feelings as its first principles, we resolve the grounds of our conviction into a previous disposition of the mind to believe the thing propounded, —that is, it may be said, into a prejudice. But this is a mistake: I suppose no favour of the mind for the doctrine propounded but what is founded on a sense and per

ception of its purity and excellence,-none but what is the consequence of that perception, and in no degree the cause of it. We suppose no previous disposition of the mind, but a general sense and approbation of what is good; which is never called a prejudice but by those who have it not, and by a gross abuse of language. The sense and approbation of what is good is no infirmity, but the perfection of our nature. Of our nature, did I say?-the approbation of what is good, joined with the perfect understanding of it, is the fection of the Divine.

per

The reason that the authority of these internal perceptions of moral truth and good is often called in question is this, that from the great diversity that is found in the opinions of men, and the different judgments that they seem to pass upon the same things, it is too hastily inferred that these original perceptions in various men are various, and cannot therefore be to any the test of universal truth. A Christian, for example, imagines a natural impurity in sensual gratifications; a Mahometan is

persuaded that they will make a part of the happiness of the righteous in a future state: The Christian reverences his Bible because it prohibits these indulgences; the Mahometan loves the Koran because it permits them. Whence, it is said, is this diversity of opinion, unless the mind of the Christian perceives those things as impure which the mind of the Mahometan equally perceives as innocent? From these equal but various perceptions they severally infer the probability of their various faiths; and who shall say that the one judges more reasonably than the other, if both judge from perceptions of which they are conscious? Yet they judge differently; both therefore cannot judge aright, unless right judgment may be different from itself. Must it not then be granted, either that these perceptions are uncertain and fallacious, — or, which may seem more reasonable, since no man can have a higher certainty than that which arises from a consciousness of his own feelings, that every man hath his own private standard of moral truth and excellence, purity and turpitude; that right and wrong are nothing in themselves, but

are to every man what his particular conscience makes them; and that the universal idea of moral beauty, of which some men have affected to be so vehemently enamoured, and which is set up as the ultimate test of truth in the highest speculations, is a mere fiction of the imagination?

It is not to be wondered that many have been carried away by the fair appearance of this argument, in which nothing seems to be alleged that is open to objection. Nevertheless, the conclusion is false, and the whole reasoning is nothing better than a cheat and a lie; the premises on which it is founded being a false fact, with much art tacitly taken for granted. The whole proceeds on this assumption, that men, in forming their judgments of things, do always refer to the original perceptions of their own minds, that is, to conscience. Deny this, and the diversity of opinions will no longer be a proof of a diversity of original perceptions; from which supposed diversity the fallaciousness of that perception was inferred. And is not this to be denied? Is it not rather the truth, that