I have spoken of such a system if consistently followed up. Now, pretensions of the same kind are maintained by a party among ourselves at the present day;-who, with all the assumptions just described, fall short of their consistent consequences. They refer to a religious authority which discards reason, yet is afraid to claim infallibility;—which rejects human means of conviction, yet does not pretend to divine powers;-which affects to command submission, yet dreads the agitation of argument. Hence in their eyes all scientific investigation is regarded with the utmost suspicion and hostility; all inquiries into physical causes are either profane intrusions on forbidden ground, or empty delusions of blinded self-conceit, and of the most fearful tendency. They must therefore be discarded, or rather, all science must be so modified as merely to hold a subordinate place in a great mystical system, and be interpreted wholly in accordance with certain high principles on which that system is founded; if viewed otherwise, it is dangerous and profane.

Such appears to be the nature of their ideas on the subject, whenever, through the obscurity which envelopes the writings of this school, we can catch a glimpse of their meaning. Thus, we are told, “In history, morals, poetry, legislation, philosophy, language, physics, religion,-heaven and earth, a body

are ingeniously turned to supply an argument for the admission of mysteries, as in transubstantiation.

of clay and a spirit breathed into its nostrils by the life-giving Spirit, stand over against each other, and whoso lifteth not up the earthly to the heavenly will bring down the heavenly to the earthly. Homer,' says even a heathen, transferred human things to the gods; would he had rather things divine to man* If the body be not spiritualized, the soul will be carnalized t."

It will be needless to comment on the entire confusion in which such mysticism involves all rational evidence. Yet a system not claiming entire infallibility, cannot surely dispense with some appeal to such evidence, if it really involve a reference to Divine inspiration.

To an ordinary inquirer of plain sense and honest purpose, a professed belief in revelation, as such, it would seem, must, in any sense, imply a reference to its alleged evidences, examined by reason; and their testimony and its application must presuppose the existence, attributes, and providence of a revealing Deity, already known independently of revelation, and therefore discovered and believed by the exercise and conviction of our unaided intellectual faculties employed in the study of his works.

In any way, then, this confounding together the respective provinces of reason and of faith leads men into equally manifest error and inconsistency; -they must fall into a palpable "petitio principii,"

* Cic. Tusc. i. 36.

+ Dr. Pusey's Sermon on the Fifth of November, Oxford, 1837.

on the one hand, or else rush into fanaticism or bewilder themselves in mystical superstition, on the other.

Meanwhile the enemies of the truth are not backward to perceive the fallacies in which each party thus involve themselves; and thus have only to borrow their language and assume their tone to disguise their insidious attacks upon all revealed religion.

Independence of Scientific and Revealed Truth.

To those who would wish to see the edifice of religious truth reared upon a solid and unassailable foundation, it will surely not seem unimportant to dwell on the necessity of a due order in the disposition of our proofs; of making the belief in revelation depend on the secure support of natural theology; and this again on the truths elicited by inductive science; and with this view carefully to distinguish the nature of scientific proof from that of religious belief. And this is the more necessary, since there are not wanting those who so far confound all such distinctions, as not only to supersede natural theology by revelation, but even go a step further, and look to the Bible as a source of instruction for the truths of natural science; that is, for those very truths on which natural theology rests, and on which consequently its own evidences ultimately depend. There are some, indeed, who have professed to found entire

systems of philosophy wholly on the basis of inspired authority; others who do not go this length, at least from the peculiar view they adopt of the character of the inspired writings, would mix up their authority with that of experimental proof, and imagine either that the one or the other can receive an accession of evidence; that that which is divine can be made more sure by human confirmation, or that which has the evidence of sense more certain by the appeal to authority*.

Let us then look at the general distinction between the ground of science and of faith. What is scientific inquiry? And what are the objects we have in view in pursuing its investigations? Is not such inquiry necessarily limited to questions of fact, and such discovery of laws and causes as we can legitimately deduce by strict reasoning upon those facts? Are not such objects exclusively those of truth as discoverable by the sole use of our reasoning faculties? If then we either adopt any other standard whatsoever in such questions, or pursue our inquiries by a reference to any other authority whatsoever than solely that of inductive inference from observed phenomena, we are deviating from the proper line of scientific inquiry; we are renouncing the principles of the inductive philosophy altogether.

Yet that which is no guide in matters of science, may be the highest standard of truth in reference to

See Note N.

3

matters which properly belong to its province. The truths of revelation, received upon their proper moral evidence, evince their divine excellence when directed to the high and peculiar ends for which they are designed. But the moment we so entirely mistake their object as to apply them to the purposes of philosophic instruction, our inquiries lose every characteristic of rational or consistent investigation.

Scientific and revealed truth are of essentially different natures, and if we attempt to combine and unite them, we are attempting to unite things of a kind which cannot be consolidated, and shall infallibly injure both. In a word, in physical science we must keep strictly to physical induction and demonstration; in religious inquiry, to moral proof; but never confound the two together. When we follow observation and inductive reasoning, our inquiries lead us to science. When we obey the authority of the Divine Word, we are not led to science but to faith. The mistake consists in confounding these two distinct objects together; and imagining that we are pursuing science when we introduce the authority of revelation. They cannot be combined without losing the distinctive character of both. If faith is to be our guide to natural truth at all, it must be wholly so. If we appeal to its authority at all on points of natural science, we must adopt it as our sole authority; we must renounce all guidance of reason, all appeal to the evidence of sense. If we are to reject the results of observation and the