matter, and the analogies of our human state, entitle us to expect. Let us, then, advert to the original form of the delusion to which Mr. Blanco White became a prey on the two greatest occasions of his falling away. They were separated by an interval of some thirty-five years.* This circumstance he conceives to be confirmatory of the justice of his course. So indeed it is, if the destroying argument itself be a sound one; but it has a significancy of quite an opposite nature if that argument be intrinsically and radically bad. Here then we will give the πρŵтоν yevdos, as he himself, and that apparently with no small complacency, has stated it; and as he applied it, first, to the authority of the Church, secondly, to the inspiration of Holy Scripture, and the authenticity of its component parts; the two pillows, in his view, of the system of Catholicity and orthodoxy.† "I will grant as much as possible to the defenders of the authenticity of the Gospels: I will acknowledge that what is alleged against that authenticity does not rise above conjecture. But, premising that the authenticity would not prove the inspiration of those writings, I ask, have the arguments any higher character than probability in regard to authenticity? Can anything but hypothetical fitness be pleaded for inspiration? Now the orthodox probabilities have very high probabilities against them: the hypothesis is all conjectural. And is it upon such grounds that Heaven can have demanded an absolute certainty of belief in the authenticity and divine authority of the whole Bible? The demand would be monstrous; belief, according to the immutable laws of the human mind, cannot be stronger than its grounds. God, who gave such laws to our souls, could not make it a moral duty for man to act against them." 27. This was written in 1839. He had, however, placed upon record some similar reasoning several years before, and with reference to his first inquiries, conducted in England soon after the year 1814. The Scriptures, he there says, are "the highest authority in matters directly connected with Christianity. But even that authority is not entitled to implicit and blind obedience. Why? Because the authenticity of those writings is only an historical probability.* "The case is exactly parallel to that of the Roman Catholic divines, when defending the supremacy and infallibility of Peter and his pretended successors.† ... "The foundation of certainty must be certain. Divines would make the Eternal Fountain of Reason more illogical than the weakest man. If God had intended to dwell miraculously among men in a book, as in an oracle, from which we might obtain infallible answers, he would not have left that first foundation of the intended certainty to probability and conjecture." These quotations, we believe, are sufficient to convey the form and the force of his argument; so that we may at once proceed to state our objections to it. 28. We are surprised at the cool, and almost contemptuous, manner, in which Mr. Blanco White speaks of the most celebrated work of Bishop Butler. After commending the sermons of that great writer, he proceeds : “Butler's Analogy is an inferior work. The argument of analogy, especially when applied to the Christianity of churches, is totally unsatisfactory." Now we must venture to hazard the conjecture that he had never adequately studied this "inferior" work: of which it appears to us that even the several members, apart from the general argument, are so many distinct * Life, I. 279. † Compare Practical and Internal Evidence,' p. 109. Life, II. p. 282. and permanent contributions to that method in philosophy which will endure as long as the dispensation of our mortal state. In his Introduction, Bishop Butler has given a brief view of probable evidence, its nature, scope, and obligatory power, which we think affords materials in abundance for the confutation of the sophistry of the argument before us. Philosophising upon human action, we must collect its laws from a legitimate induction; and we cordially subscribe to the principle, that "God who has given certain laws to our souls could not make it a moral duty for man to act against them." 29. Now the argument of Mr. Blanco White appears, firstly, to confound belief with knowledge; and, secondly, to assume that orthodoxy, or the Catholic faith, is connected with belief rather than with action, or with belief apart from action. As to the first: "your evidences," says he, 66 are not demonstrative; therefore I cannot believe." This is a gross inconsequence. We must entreat the reader to remember that in the language of metaphysics the term probability includes everything short of absolute and infallible, or properly scientific, certainty; and with this single caution we reply to Mr. White, that demonstration is the appropriate foundation of knowledge, but probability of belief. 30. Assuredly, we are not about to take refuge from the adversary in pleading the majesty of faith as against reason, or in an appeal to theology against experience, or in inventing a new law of credibility for religious purposes, which shall be inapplicable to common life. There is indeed a dictum in vogue with some, "where mystery begins, religion ends;" which almost provokes the parody, "where antithesis begins, common-sense ends." But our intention is to charge upon the theory of Mr. Blanco White this intelligible and capital offence; that it, like all the tribe to which it belongs, errs against reason, against experience, against the principles on which the ordinary and uniform practice of mankind in ordinary life is founded. This ordinary and uniform practice, and not the crotchets of a disorderly and unstable understanding, may suffice to show us, with some tolerable clearness, what really are those laws which God has given to our souls, and which it is not only not a duty to infringe, but the very first and highest duty to observe in act, and to maintain in undisputed authority. 31. First, we hold that it is only by a licence of speech that the term knowledge can be applied to any of our human perceptions. For as nothing can in the nature of things, properly speaking, be known, except that which exists, or known in any manner other than that exact manner in which it exists, it follows that knowledge can properly be predicated only of those perceptions which are absolutely and exactly true; and further, that it can be so predicated only by those who infallibly know them to be true. In strictness, therefore, knowledge is not predicable by us of any one of our own perceptions; whatever number of them may be true, we do not infallibly know of any one of them, that it is true. Of all the steps in the operations of our mental faculties, there is not one, at which it is abstractedly impossible that error should intervene; and as this is not impossible, knowledge, the certain and precise correspondence of the percipient and the thing perceived, cannot be categorically asserted. If, therefore, without knowledge in its scientific sense there can be no legitimate belief, this wide universe is a blank, and nothing can be believed: nothing theolo gical, nothing moral, nothing social, nothing physical. In a word, abstract certainty, in this dispensation, we scarcely can possess, though we may come indefinitely near it and knowledge and certainty, and all similar expressions as practical terms, must be understood not absolutely but relatively; relatively, that is, to the limit imposed by the nature of our faculties, and this not with regard to revelation only, but throughout the whole circle of our experience. 32. Next to this abstract certainty, comes that kind of assent to propositions which, according to the constitution of our minds, is such as to exclude all doubt. Human language applies the denomination of knowledge to such assent, in cases where this exclusion is entire and peremptory in the highest degree. Between that point, and the point at which a proposition becomes improbable, and a just understanding inclines to its rejection, an infinity of shades of likelihood intervene. For example: where the exclusion of doubt is after consideration entire, but yet not peremptory and immediate; where it depends upon the comprehensive and continuous view of many particulars; where it rests upon the recollection of a demonstration, of which the detail has escaped from the memory; where it proceeds from some strong original instinct, incapable of analysis in the last resort: these are all cases in which doubt might be entirely banished, but yet we should scarcely know whether to say our assent was founded on knowledge or upon belief, since the shades of the two, as they are commonly understood, pass into one another. Generally, however, this distinction would be taken between them; that we should call knowledge what does not to our perceptions admit of degree, and what does admit of it we should call belief, although we might in |