nations, been denominated the province of conjecture and uncertainty.

FROM what has been said, the attentive reader will easily discover, that the author's argument against miracles, has not the least affinity to the argument used by Dr Tillotson against transubstantiation, with which Mr Hume has introduced his subject. Let us hear the argument, as it is related in the Essay, from the writings of the Archbishop. It is acknowledged on all hands,' says that learned prelate, that the authority either of the scripture or of tradition, is founded merely on 'the testimony of the apostles, who were eye-wit'nesses to those miracles of our Saviour, by which

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he proved his divine mission. Our evidence then for the truth of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses; because even in the first authors of our religion it was no greater; and, it is evident, it must diminish in passing from them to their disciples; nor can any one be so certain of the truth of their testimony, as of the immediate objects of his senses. But a ⚫ weaker evidence can never destroy a stronger; ' and therefore, were the doctrine of the real presence ever so clearly revealed in scripture, it were directly contrary to the rules of just reasoning 'to give our assent to it. It contradicts sense, though both the scripture and tradition, on which it is supposed to be built, carry not such evidence

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'with them as sense, when they are considered merely as external evidences, and are not brought

home to every one's breast by the immediate

operation of the Holy Spirit * That the evidence of testimony is less than the evidence of sense, is undeniable.--Sense is the source of that evidence, which is first transferred to the memory of the individual, as to a general reservoir, and thence transmitted to others by the channel of testimony. That the original evidence can never gain any thing, but must lose, by the transmission, is beyond dispute. What has been rightly perceived may be misremembered; what is rightly remembered may, through incapacity, or through ill intention, be misreported; and what is rightly reported may be misunderstood. In any of these four ways, therefore, either by defect of memory, of elocution, or of veracity in the relater, or by misapprehension in the hearer, there is a chance, that the truth received by the information of the senses, may be misrepresented or mistaken; now every such chance occasions a real diminution of the evidence. That the sacramental elements are bread and wine, not flesh and blood, our sight and touch and taste and smell concur in testifying. If these senses are not to be credited, the apostles themselves could not have evidence of the mission of their master. For the greatest external evidence they had, or could

* Page 173, 174.

have, of his mission, was that which their senses gave them, of the reality of his miracles. But whatever strength there is in this argument, with regard to the apostles, the argument, with regard to us, who, for those miracles, have only the evidence, not of our own senses, but of their testimony, is incomparably stronger. In their case, it is sense contradicting sense; in ours, it is sense contradicting testimony. But what relation has this to the author's argument? None at all. Testimony, it is acknowledged, is a weaker evidence than sense. But it has been already evinced, that its evidence for particular facts is infinitely stronger than that which the general conclusions from experience can afford us. Testimony holds directly of memory and sense. Whatever is duly attested must be remembered by the witness; whatever is duly remembered must once have been perceived. But nothing similar takes place with regard to experience, nor can testimony, with any appearance of meaning, be said to hold of it.

THUS I have shown, as I proposed, that the author's reasoning proceeds on a false hypothesis.It supposes testimony to derive its evidence solely from experience, which is false.-It supposes by consequence, that contrary observations have a weight in opposing testimony, which the first and most acknowledged principles of human reason, or,

if

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like the term better, common sense, evidently shows that they have not.-It assigns a rule for discovering the superiority of contrary evidences, which, in the latitude there given it, tends to mis lead the judgment, and which it is impossible, by any explication, to render of real use.

SECTION II.

Mr Hume charged with some fallacies in his way of managing the argument.

IN the essay there is frequent mention of the word experience, and much use made of it. It is strange that the author has not favoured us with the definition of a term of so much moment to his argument. This defect I shall endeavour to supply ; and the rather, as the word appears to be equivocal, and to be used by the essayist in two very different senses. The first and most proper signification of the word, which, for distinction's sake, I shall call personal experience, is that given in the preceding section. It is, as was observed, founded in memory, and consists solely of the general maxims or conclusions, that each individual hath formed

from the comparison of the particular facts remembered by him.' In the other signification, in which the word is sometimes taken, and which I shall distinguish by the term derived, it may be thus defined. It is founded in testimony, and consists, not only of all the experiences of others, which have, through that channel, been commu'nicated to us, but of all the general maxims or ⚫ conclusions we have formed, from the comparison of particular facts attested.'

In proposing his argument, the author would surely be understood to mean only personal experience; otherwise, his making testimony derive its light from an experience which derives its light from testimony, would be introducing what logicians term a circle in causes. It would exhibit the same things alternately, as causes and effects of each other. Yet nothing can be more limited, than the sense which is conveyed under the term experience, in the first acceptation. The merest clown or peasant derives incomparably more knowledge from testimony, and the communicated experience of others, than in the longest life he could have amassed out of the treasure of his own memory. Nay, to such a scanty portion the savage himself is not confined. If that therefore must be the rule, the only rule, by which every testimony is ultimately to be judged, our belief in matters of fact must have very narrow bounds. No testimony ought to have any weight with us, that does not relate an event,