no man is at all times attentive to these perceptions? that many men never attend to them at all? that in many they are stifled and overcome, — in some, by education, fashion, or example; in others, by the desperate wickedness of their own hearts? Now, the mind in which this ruin hath been effected hath lost indeed its natural criterion of truth; and judges not by its original feelings, but by opinions taken up at random. Nevertheless, the nature of things is not altered by the disorder of perverted minds; nor is the evidence of things the less to those who perceive them as they are, because there are those who have not that perception. No man the less clearly sees the light, whose own eye is sound, because it is not seen by another who is blind; nor are the distinctions of colour less to all mankind, because a disordered eye confounds them. The same reasoning may be applied to our mental perceptions: The Christian's discernment of the purity of the gospel doctrine is not the less clear his veneration for it arising from that discernment not the less rational, because a Mahometan may with equal ardour embrace a corrupt system, and may be insensible to the greater beauty of that which he rejects. In a word, every man implicitly trusts his bodily senses concerning external objects placed at a convenient distance; and every man may with as good a reason put even a greater trust in the perceptions of which he is conscious in his own mind; which indeed are nothing else than the first notices of truth and of Himself which the Father of Spirits imparts to subordinate minds, and which are to them the first principles and seeds of intellect. I have been led into an abstruse disquisition; but I trust that I have shown, and in a manner that plain men may understand, that there is an infallible certainty in our natural sense of moral right and wrong, purity and turpitude; and that I have exposed the base sophistry of that ensnaring argument by which some men would persuade the contrary: Consequently, the internal probability of our most holy religion is justly inferred from the natural sense of the excellence of its doctrines; and a faith built on the view of that probability rests on the most solid foundation. The external evidence which is to complete the proof is much the same to every man at this day as the external evidence of the resurrection was to Thomas upon the report of the other ten apostles; with this difference, that those wonderful facts of our Saviour's life which Thomas knew by ocular proof we receive from the testimony of others. The credibility of this testimony it is not difficult for any one to estimate, who considers how improbable it is that the preachers of a righteous doctrine, a pure morality, a strict religion, should themselves be impostors, how improbable that the apostles and first preachers could be deceived in things which passed before their eyes; and how much credit is naturally due to a number of well-informed men, of unimpeached character, attesting a thing to their own loss and at the hazard of their lives. This is the summary of the external evidence of Christianity as it may appear to men in general-to the most illiterate who have had any thing of a Christian education. The general view of it, joined to the intrinsic probability of the doctrine, may reasonably work that determined conviction which may incline the illiterate believer to turn a deaf ear to objections which the learned only can be competent to examine; and to repose his mind in this persuasion, that there is no objection to be brought, which, if understood, would appear to him sufficient to outweigh the mass of evidence that is before him. - It is to be observed, that all the writers who have attacked the external evidence seem to have taken it for granted that the thing to be proved is in itself improbable. None, I believe, hath been so inconsiderate as to assert, that if the Christian scheme were probable in itself, the evidence we have of it, with all the difficulties they have been able to raise in it, would not be amply sufficient. That they do not perceive the intrinsic probability of Christianity, those of them, I mean, who - discover a due respect for natural religion, that these do not perceive the intrinsic probability of the doctrines of our religion, I would not willingly impute to any moral depravity of heart: I will rather suppose that they have attended singly to the marvel of the story, and have never taken a near view of the beauty and perfection of the moral and theological system. From this general state of the principles on which the faith of Christians in these ages may be supposed to rest, when none can have the conviction of ocular proof, it is not difficult to understand what is the peculiar merit of that faith which believes what it hath not seen, whereby it is entitled to our Saviour's blessing. The merit of this faith is not to be placed merely in its consequences, in its effects on the believer's life and actions. It is certain, that faith which hath not these effects is dead: There can be no sincere and salutary faith, where its natural fruit, a virtuous and holy life, is wanting. But faith, if I mistake not, hath, besides, another merit more properly its own, not acquired from its consequences, but conveyed to it from the principles in |