not as the perpetual means of extending salvation through all future ages.

Farther. Where there is an established cause, manifest to all the world, fixed, permanent, and regular in its action, it were contrary to all order and analogy to all the known proceedings of God, either in the world of matter, or the world of spirits, to suppose the effect to be produced by another latent and concealed cause. Now we have the strongest established evidence for our faith in Christ. Shall then conviction, the natural effect of evidence, be supposed in this case to proceed from some other cause? Where one adequate cause of the effect appears, another supposed and doubtful cause will not readily be admitted. Where evidence, the universal cause of conviction, undeniably exists, it should seem to require an additional miracle to prevent the effect, rather than to produce it. In short, either the natural or the spiritual miracle must be unnecessary. We are sure that the natural miracle doth exist; we must therefore suppose that the spiritual doth not.

Why hath God given us minds moveable by the weight of evidence, and why hath he prepared the evidence suited to move us, if nothing is to result from this correspondence?

The mind is moved by every inferior evidence in every lower concern, and can it be supposed to be unmoved by the highest evidence in the most important cause?

When we see the strongest external evidence

applied, and to all appearance conviction arising in the mind of the believer from the force of the evidence, it is strange to say still, that this conviction arises from an inward illumination. It is as if when we see the seal applied to the wax, we should still insist, that the impression was not stamped by the seal, but was. formed by some inward motion of the wax.

"Ye believe in God," says our Saviour, "believe also in me." The works of creation give us proofs of a God; the works of revelation in like manner prove a Redeemer. They who assert, that faith in a Redeemer arises from an inward impression, notwithstanding the outward evidence fitted to produce it, may with equal appearance of truth and reason say, that the belief of a God likewise arises from an inward impression, notwithstanding the evi dence that all creation bears to this truth.

If we go on to consider the nature of faith itself, we shall still see farther reasons to conclude that it cannot have this origin. Con sciousness indeed belongs to faith, as it does. to every other act of the mind. When we have faith, we must feel that we have it: but faith itself can never be a feeling, nor the effect of any feeling. Faith implies a belief of many facts: as that the Son of God came down from heaven, died, and rose again for us. It does not seem easy to conceive how we can have an inward feeling of the reality of these facts, if we set aside the history of them and its evi, dence. If it could be conceived, the operation

would still seem unnecessary, because intended only to effect what the history, together with its evidence, is able to effect without it.

We must believe the history of prophecies and miracles, before we can believe our Saviour's divine mission. We must believe our Saviour's divine mission, before we can believe his revelations concerning redemption and a future state. This is the natural and necessary order. Let those then, who imagine that their faith in a Redeemer is an immediate divine impression, consider, whether they did in reality conceive this faith, without any belief of the previous articles, and entirely independent of them. Let one instance be produced of faith in a Redeemer, where the history of redemption was not first known. Where the means of producing faith are applied, to suppose that the faith arises from a new miracle, is to suppose that the means are insufficient; that the miracles and prophecies are not well attested; that they are not sufficient to prove our Saviour's divine mission; or his divine mission being proved, that we have not sufficient grounds to believe what he hath revealed to us.

To set aside the outward object in the production of faith, and to say that it arises entirely from within, independent of any power or impression of outward evidence, is to intro duce into religion that theory, alike admired and rejected, which hath been applied to sen- . sation. God may indeed, by an act of his creative power, excite faith in the mind without

it

its suitable evidence, as he may stamp upon the images of things without the application of a material world. This cannot be denied. Yet still, for the same reasons that we believe matter to exist out of the mind, we must believe faith to have its outward object likewise.

Thus do the nature of the human mind, the nature of gospel evidence, and the nature of faith itself, all conspire to support that account of the origin of faith, which we have in the gospels.

The same observations may be applied to that other office of inward illumination, which our modern pretenders to inspiration lay claim to, of guiding and directing them in the practice of religion, and in the ways of life. For this interferes with that outward and established rule of life, which heaven has laid before us in the holy scriptures, as the other does with the established evidence.

It will hardly be maintained that all these pretended inward feelings and illuminations are true and of divine original. Some have been confessedly delusive, and the parents of most diabolical errors. How then are the true to be distinguished from the delusive? There is no other way, but by comparing them with the word of God. If their suggestions be repugnant to that word, they must be false. If consonant to it, they may indeed be true, but must seem unnecessary, because they teach us nothing but what that word would teach us without their help. Thus does every consi

deration bring us back to that word of God, which was given us for our instruction in all divine truth.-If it be said that these inward suggestions are supplemental to the word of God, and therefore not unnecessary; it must first be proved that revelation is incomplete, and that we have room to expect new revelations. Would the abettors of these opinions prove, that they have been favored with new revelations? Let them produce any article of faith, any rule either of belief or practice, which they have learnt by that means, and which we do not as clearly learn from the written word of God.

The method of inspiration, or inward impression, was indeed necessary in the case of the apostles, to lead them into all truth, because their information could come only from heaven. But when they had received the heavenly gift of truth, and had provided for its conveyance to all the world by their teaching, and by the records, of truth which they left for the use of all mankind, it was no longer necessary that others should be instructed in the same manner. The business of inspiration was now fully answered, and the world was henceforth to learn that truth from the written word of God, which the apostles had composed from the dictates of the Spirit. The Spirit led the apostles into all truth for no other end, than that they might lead all the rest of the world into the same heavenly light. Το say that all Christians are still to be led into