CHAPTER XII.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

We will now conclude this part of our subject with a few reflections on what has been adduced.

In the first place, it will have been observed, in what a remarkable manner the considerations of highly probable evidence are connected with the primary principles of natural and revealed religion.

1. The mind of man is convinced by experience, that a necessity compels him to admit this highly probable evidence as his guide in the common affairs of life: moreover he perceives that he thus ordinarily obtains his object, truth.

2. Hence his mind being prepared and trained, he more readily admits this kind of evidence with reference to the existence and attributes of the Deity, and his own relation to God as his Creator, Preserver, Lawgiver: and his conviction of the truth of these elements of natural religion is strengthened and matured.

3. He is now led to conclude, that in matters concerning human conduct it is right as well as necessary to admit this highly probable evidence: and his belief is confirmed that he shall thus ordinarily obtain truth; for to receive such evidence is to obey the law of God, a God of truth.

4. Thus armed, he proceeds to the consideration of revealed religion; and appreciating both the intrinsic weight of the evidence, and the importance of the subject-matter, he willingly receives what is proposed as truth.

5. Having admitted revelation, and obtained definite ideas of the extent of human responsibility, he again recurs to the law of highly probable evidence; and being assured that God has not only enacted, but that He vindicates and supports this law among other laws by a system of rewards and punishments, he finds a sense of its importance still more deeply impressed upon

his mind.

6. The propriety of obeying this law then is altogether manifest. For, to sum up what has been said, obedience is necessary, right, expedient.

On the whole therefore, as man has perpetually to act, it is plainly his constant business to discover what is more or less like truth; and from the likeness to infer that he has obtained the

thing itself, i.e. truth. The inference is in one case an easy step, which the mind is ready without hesitation to take: in another a wide and deep chasm intervenes, which is to be overleapt, and yet not without reluctance and difficulty. The similitude of truth, presenting innumerable degrees of likeness, is to truth itself as a mathematical curve, which continually approaches but never reaches its asymptote. And in regard both to justice and goodness, we treasure in our minds abstract ideas of these principles, but we can never, on any given occasion, assert, with philosophical strictness, more than that we have perceived what appears to be just or good. For, at least, certain facts or circumstances must be obtained as preliminary to our considerations of what is just or good. Thus the judge assumes the guilt of the prisoner before he proceeds to punishment. Admit then, if you please, that if the offence has been committed, the sentence is most just; still,

if

you have only probable evidence of guilt, you have but the same that justice is done. But even if the accused is certainly guilty, the judge as a man may err, or the legislature as fallible may have assigned an undue amount of punishment. Observations to the same effect may be made in regard to what appears good.* Such

* See above, p. 135.

is man's condition, such the limitation of his faculties.

The human mind, however, is naturally inquisitive; it thirsts to know. In mathematical reasonings it seems to approach so nearly to the grasp of the truth it covets, that the questions have sometimes been asked, Whether when confined to these studies the mind is not perhaps too apt to require similarly cogent proof of other truths presented for its reception? Whether men are not thus sometimes led into error, by refusing to admit what, by the law of highly probable evidence, they are bound to acknowledge? Whether in truth they fully appreciate that law, and are duly contented with what God has given to man?*

* A critic in the Quarterly, reviewing the autobiography of Bishop Watson, writes thus: We begin with a very remarkable passage, which strikingly corroborates an observation of Warburton, that long addiction to mathematical pursuits incapacitates the mind from weighing the various degrees of moral proof: "I was early in life accustomed to mathematical discussion, and the certainty attending it; and not meeting with that certainty in the science of metaphysics, of natural and revealed religion, I have an habitual tendency to hesitation in judgment, rather than to a peremptory judgment on many points."

"To expect a produce of wheat from the seed and cultivation of barley, or the fruit of the olive-tree from the plant and culture of the vine, would, in common life, be marked as an absurdity akin to madness. So to suppose that truths from

It has been asserted by persons to whom these questions have perhaps occurred, and who have at all events rightly disapproved of the demands of a mind unsatisfied with moral proof, that it seems a more holy and proper thing for men to believe than to know the secrets of divine truth. In regard to all this it may seem sufficient to remark, that the state of man is what it is. Had the question been considered of endowing man with higher powers of investigating and appreciating truth; surely we cannot pretend a priori to judge whether such a course would or would not have been consistent with the character of the Creator, with the accomplishment of the objects which it was proper to contemplate, with the obstacles and difficulties interposed. We are ignorant of the state of the case, and therefore on this ground alone it would be presumptuous in us to pretend to judge on such a question. But, on the other hand, it behoves us to endeavour truly to estimate the position and cir

different principles, and deduced in a different way will result the same, will shine with an equal degree of brightness, or be attended with the same measure of conviction, involves an absurdity equally great, though perhaps not quite so glaring. Yet whilst the former is an absurdity, of which the peasant is utterly incapable, the latter has too often disgraced the philosopher or theologist."-Tatham's Bampton Lectures.