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value of tlie evidence which the gospel presents ? - Let us meet the question fairly and honestly , and divest ourselves of prejudice as much as we can ; remembering that our belief is not a thing that it is in our power to grant or to withhold at our pleasure . A man cannot say , I
will , I will believe , and . so become instantaneously a belieyer : neither is a verbal declaration an infallible proof of faith . For a man may say he believes , and yet remain unconvinced ; or he may believe , because the thing is impossible ^—Credit quia impossibile est , said one of the fathers of the Christian
church . Some agam have defined faith to be an irresistible impulse of the spirit of God , commanding the assent of the regenerate to certain truths or doctrines which the natural or carnal man refuses to admit . This is not faith , but compulsion . What then is faith ? Faith is , in short , an act of
the understanding ; and not an act of the will , nor an irresistible impulse of the spirit of God . It is the assent which the mind gives to certain truths , or to certain doctrines , upon the production of sufficient evidence .
Produce that evidence , and the mind must assent ; withhold it , and it cannot . The assent thus obtained , is faith * pure and undefiled before God and the Father / ' But there is a species of
faith more common , though less pure , that men adopt , not as resulting from due evidence which they have themselves examined ; but as having been transmitted to them from their fathers .
This is the faith of the multitude ; and it may be called traditionary or hereditary faith . On this subject there is a query that suggests itself , which may , perhaps , startle some whose faith is already well fixed ; but which I cannot regard as being wholly impertinent ,
considering the great numbers , even in this country , who cither disbelieve , or affect to disbelieve altogether , the miracles of Moses and of Christ , The query is this : Is the evidence which we have for the truth of the miracles recorded in the Bible * a good and sufficient evidence ? If by sufficient , we are to understand that which is calculated to
obtain universal assent , then the fact shews that it is not , for all men do not J > elteve . Uut if by sufficient , we are % q understand such a degree of evi-
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dence as is competent to ? the purposes " of God's moral government - among men , then the case is no longer the same , and men will entertain different views of the value of that evidence according to their different capacities and acquirements .
He who i 3 himself convinced , gene * rally regards the scruples of the seep * tic as being altogether unreasonable and absurd—hcereticus et damnabilis error ; and not unfrequently upon the following ground : Because the evidence which we have for the miracles recorded in the Bible is , as he affirms , the same with that which we have for
any historical fact whatever ; so that we may just as well deny that Caesar subdued Gaul , or that Columbus discovered America , as deny that Chri&t wrought miracles . Now although there is truth in this statement , yet it is not the whole of the truth , and the
case is not fairly put . It is true that we have the same sort of evidence for the miracles of Moses and of Christ , that we have for the achievements of Julius Caesar , or the discoveries of Columbus , namely , the evidence of testimony ^ but it is not a testimony that is under the same conditions . In
the one case , it is testimony given to a fact to which I can find a thousand others that are perfectly analogous $ in the other case , it is testimony given to a fact to which I can find nothing analogous in nature—Res nova non ullis cognita temporibus . I can have no difficulty in giving credit to the achieve * ments of the soldier , or the discoveries
of the navigator , because similar achievements or discoveries have been often effected by others ; and it may be within the very sphere of my own experience and observation , — - ^ say that of the celebrated victory of Waterloo , or of the discovery of , the New Georgian Islands , that ultima Tkule of northwestern navigation .
In the same manner , I can have no difficulty in giving credit to the historical fact of the existence of Jesus Christ , of his mean and obscure parentage , of his becoming ultimately a religious and moral instructor , of his being
persecuted by the existing authorities , ana , finally , of his being put to the painful and ignominious death of the cross ; because all these facts are analogous to the great mass of other facts of whicb I read in history * * or to facts wfa * *
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688 On Mircfclesr .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1821, page 588, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2505/page/20/
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