mate and essential. "Faith cometh by hear"ing:" but that in which our knowledge originates, is the means only, not the cause of our believing. We are commanded to believe; but did belief, in the scriptural acceptation, relate simply to the understanding, would it have been enjoined as an act of obedience? Is there any thing of a moral character in a mere exercise of reason, that should constitute it a matter of duty? Must not Faith, then, to be a moral act, relate to the disposition of the heart, as essentially involved in its exercise? Faith is, indeed, a rational act; it is nevertheless the result, not of reason, for then all men who can reason would believe, but of religious obedience, in respect of which, men of exactly the same intellectual advantages, differ infinitely. Faith or belief implies a certain degree of previous knowledge; but the measure of our knowledge is so far from being the measure of our duty, that we are encouraged to expect its increase as the effect and the reward of faith: "If any man will do the will of God, he shall "know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." There is as much scope for the exercise of that disposition of mind in which Faith originates, at the lowest degree of knowledge or of probability, as at the highest attainable points of clearness and certainty in the comprehension and assured persuasion of the truth.

Scougal.

The "obedience of faith" consists in the sincere reception of the mysterious facts which compose the substance of the Christian Revelation, on the ground of Divine testimony. Christianity is a system of facts; its doctrines are facts, facts which could not have been known, had they not been revealed, and which are understood only in proportion as they are believed. Nothing short of Divine testimony affords an adequate or rational ground for believing them; and it is a devout regard to the "witness of God," that constitutes the excellence of faith. To the facts themselves, and to the practical consequences which result from them, there exists a native repugnance in the human heart, which is the true source of unbelief: on this account, faith partakes of the nature of a moral requirement. Where this principle, however, really operates, it will secure the admission of every essential truth; nor can there possibly exist a fundamental disagreement among those who religiously believe, taking the Scriptures as the only and sufficient rule of faith.

Religion, then, whether it be taken to imply the habit of devout belief, or the act of worship, is a principle which terminates upon the Divine Being as its object, implying "a delightful and "affectionate sense of the attributes"* of his revealed character. Love to the Divine Being,

must be allowed to form, even on the principles of pure theism, the first obligation of a rational creature. Upon the breach of this duty, the unrelaxing severity of the Moral Law denounces the penalty of everlasting death. The Christian Revelation has introduced no change in our natural obligations, no change in the nature of religion; but it renders a peculiar modification of this primary duty indispensable in all to whom this revelation is conveyed. It is necessary that the exercise of the religious principle should in all respects correspond with that manifestation of Deity, which forms the basis of the Christian economy, and which is conveyed in those words: "God in Christ "reconciling the world unto himself." In consequence of this, religion and irreligion become respectively distinguished by new peculiarities of feature, and "faith in the Lord Jesus Christ" is henceforth inseparable from the idea of the creature's primary duty to the Divine Being; the Father having "committed all judgement "unto the Son, that all men should honour the "Son even as they honour the Father." The relative character which the Son of God has been pleased to assume, as the Head of the Church, constitutes him, in an especial sense, the object of the believer's devout regard; so that love to the Divine Redeemer, is uniformly represented in the New Testament, as the essen

Moral design of all Christian

tial characteristic of the religious principle, and the bond of Christian fellowship. "Peace be

"with all them," says the great Apostle, " that "love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity." In these words a definite line is drawn between the religious and the irreligious, which no sophistry can obliterate. We can have no correct notion of religion, which is not comprised in this definition. It includes the exercise of every duty of which the light of nature informs us, superadding those which originate in the discoveries of Revelation. It implies every fact connected with the Christian system, the reception of which is essential to the character of a believer. It shews us that the existence of the principle of religion, may consist with multiform diversities of opinion, respecting the philosophical relations of abstract truths, the circumstantials of Christian worship, questions of polity, or the niceties of systematic arrangement. We are left at full permission to treat with all the freedom of rational argument, human opinions on points of inferior importance, without danger of losing sight of the inseparable connexion between the existence of the re

ligious principle, and the belief of the fundamental truths of Christianity.

§ 3. Assuming that this representation of the nature of religion is admitted to be correct, we as means of proceed to remark, that the general design of

institutions,

religion.

all Christian institutions, is instrumentally to subserve either the production, or the more perfect development, of this spiritual principle in the minds of individuals, for this is all that can be meant by the promotion of religion. The ordinances of the New Testament, unlike the typical and positive institutions of the Jewish economy, are uniformly of the nature of moral means; the end they are designed to answer is, the excitement of faith. "These things are

66

66

The

"written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye might have life through his name." ultimate object of the Apostles, in the promulgation of the Gospel, was far from being the mere establishment of the miraculous facts which constituted the basis of their doctrines; it was to produce a change in the hearts of their auditors, from which alone their cordial belief in those facts, repugnant as they were to their prejudices, and offensive to the pride of reason, together with their profession of that belief in the face of hostility and opprobrium, could be expected to result. The circumstances attending the first preaching of the Gospel, rendered it extremely improbable that motives of less force and purity than such as originated in this moral change, should induce any individual to join himself to the Christian society. Those circumstances, indeed, tended to disqualify a person