case, and in proportion as it is, its demerit will be more readily discerned; which is the first step towards amendment. On this foundation rest all advice, admonition, instruction, education. Nay, as I have already observed, this capacity of discerning truth and falsehood, good and evil, virtue and vice, is the very characteristic of the rational spirit; which is surely the greatest possible confirmation of my argument.

IV. The following examples will facilitate the application of my reasoning to the main question. Suppose a person attacked by a severe distemper. The physician convinces him that this alarming disease has been produced by his antecedent course of life, which, if continued, must necessarily aggravate it; but that, by a different course, he will obtain a perfect cure. This conviction, extending to both these particulars, remains fixed in the patient's mind with equal clearness and cogency. Is it possible that, if desirous of recovering his health, he should persist in his former course, or refuse to pursue the other prescribed to him? I apprehend that it is no more possible, than that a man can, at the same instant, entertain desire and aversion in regard to the self-same object, loving what he hates, and hating what he loves. On the other hand, it is very possible that a person in immi'nent danger of his life may reject the proffered remedy, notwithstanding he admits its efficacy

as often as he deliberately considers the case. To what then can such conduct be ascribed? Plainly to this; that when he neglects to follow the prescription, either he believes not at that precise moment, that the disease will prove mortal, though no remedy be applied, or, though he had before assented to the salutary effect of the remedy in question, he now doubts of it, or he hopes deliverance from some other expedient. Beside these, he can have no motive to act such a part; and for man to act without motive is impossible. He can have no motive, unless the mere impulse of appetite, confirmed by habit, driving him to act in opposition to the prescription. Still, a person thus impelled has in view a determined object which he prefers, but which his reason, if duly exerted, might have enabled him, by controlling appetite, to reject, or cease to pursue. In the instance supposed, however, his conviction, in regard to all the circumstances of his situation, was too feeble and fleeting to operate its due effect in his mind and conduct. Even under the influence of appetite, however, if he prefers one object to another, when both are placed before him, or, in other words, if he chooses between two objects, and acts in consequence of that choice, which the act of choosing necessarily implies, his will is for that moment guided by his understanding, however erroneous its dictate may be. In short,

if a person really and firmly believes any practical proposition, that is, entertains at this instant a firm persuasion of its truth, I cannot conceive how he can, I say not at the next, but at that very same instant, act in contradiction to it; that is, hold it to be false. If I certainly know that a book is not in a particular library, I will not repair to that library in order to find it. If I go thither, I must have in view something else than the purpose of finding it there.

From the foregoing reasoning, it appears to me sufficiently plain that, in the simple act of faith or of belief, the human mind always operates, and must operate, in the same manner, whatever be the object of belief or faith; that the only difference between one faith and another, if I may use this expression, consists in their different degrees of strength and permanence when directed to the same object, and, when directed to different objects, in the different strength and permanence of the act, joined to the different natures of these objects, as connected with action, and as influencing our happiness; and that, consequently, saving faith is neither more nor less than "a sincere, vigorous, and comprehensive persuasion of the truth of all the doctrines of the gospel." This faith must be so deeply rooted in the soul, that it operates habitually on the believer, and influences the whole of his conduct. It must necessarily produce an incli

nation, nay, a determined resolution, to regulate every part of his life conformably to revelation, considered in all its various respects; in its displays of the divine nature and perfections; in its manifestations of mercy and grace to a guilty world through Jesus Christ; in its scheme of peculiar doctrines relative to the salvation of men; in its prospects, its promises, its threats, with regard to a present and future life. Saving faith, considered in itself, and without reference to the agency by which it is produced in the soul, and of which I shall soon speak, is, in one word, “a rooted, an habitual, an operative conviction, that the objects which the gospel presents, are of the highest importance to man, and indispensably necessary to his deliverance from unspeakable misery, and to his only happiness both in this world and through all eternity."

Some very important inferences flow naturally from the conclusion above established, and the premises on which it is deduced.

In the first place, faith in the gospel cannot exist without producing good works, or, in the words of the apostle Paul, without "a conversation as it becometh the gospel of Christ ;"a that is, a conversation or conduct marked by piety, benevolence, and temperance, by the practice

a Phil. i. 27.

of Christian morals, as they have been illustrated in a preceding chapter. For the various objects of that faith directly tend to produce and foster in the soul all these virtues; and virtuous convictions and feelings prompt, whenever occasion offers, to a correspondent practice. It is a contradiction in terms to suppose the contrary; a principle of action that prompts not to act, is absurd. But faith, or the belief of any proposition, or series of propositions, necessarily furnishes to the human mind, as far as either is of a practical tendency, or, in other words, as often as it is considered as the foundation of procedure, a principle of action. Hence, the doctrines of the gospel being all, as I shall afterwards fully show, of a moral nature, that is, prompting to action, a sincere and firm belief of them must unavoidably become an operative principle in the believer's heart, or produce good works in the whole of his life, as far as human infirmity will permit.

It is therefore a vain fancy to pretend to possess faith, whatever other feelings prevail in the mind, unless it be powerfully constrained to endeavour after an uniform and universal obedience to the commands of God. "He that saith he abideth in Christ, ought himself also to walk even as he walked.”a "As he which has called

a 1 John ii. 6.