authority of the revealer, which, though in many things it differ from opinion (as commonly the word opinion is understood), yet in some things, I doubt not, you will confess that it agrees with it. As, first, that as opinion is an assent, so is faith also. Secondly, that as opinion, so faith is always built upon less evidence than that of sense or science; which assertion you not only grant, but mainly contend for in your sixth chapter. Thirdly and lastly, that as opinion, so faith admits degrees, and that, as there may be a strong and weak opinion, so there may be a strong and weak faith. These things, if you will grant (as sure, if you be in your right mind, you will not deny any of them), I am well contented that this ill-sounding word opinion should be discarded, and that among the intellectual habits you should seek out some other genus for Faith; for I will never contend with any man about words who grants my meaning.

That Faith is but another word for Opinion, having its very essence in the perception of the preponderance of probabilities, I hold a second Popish error— indeed the queen-bee in the hive. The Romanists have decided Quod fides sit essentialiter in Intellectu, and Chillingworth is right in making their hostility to Faith Opinion a mere logomachy. Let Faith be considered, first, as a moral act; secondly, as a moral act ripened by habit into a moral state-and Opinion, even as elsewhere Works, as the natural consequent of that state, and one of its diagnostics; and Chillingworth's objections and fears in this and the following page will lose all their force.

=

Ibid. p. 59.

Yet all this I say not as if I doubted that the Spirit of God, being implored by devout and humble prayer and sincere obedience, may and will, by degrees, advance His servants higher, and give them a certainty of adherence

beyond their certainty of evidence. But what God gives as a reward to believers, is one thing; but what He requires of all men as their duty, is another; and what He will accept of out of grace and favour, is yet another.

St. Augustine asserts the contrary, viz. that clearness of comprehension is the reward of certain adherence-wisely, I think, and evangelically.

Ibid. p. 61.

For though your Church were indeed as infallible a propounder of Divine truths as it pretends to be, yet, if it appeared not to me to be so, I might very well believe God most true, and your Church most false: as, though the Gospel of St. Matthew be the Word of God, yet, if I neither knew it to be so nor believed it, I might believe in God, and yet think that Gospel a fable. Hereafter, therefore, I must entreat you to remember, that our being guilty of this impiety depends not only upon your being, but upon our knowing that you

are so.

Such knowledge not having been precluded by any wrong moral dispositions, of which God only is the Judge.

Chap. ii. Ibid. p. 77.

Since then the visible Church of Christ our Lord is that infallible means whereby the revealed truths of Almighty God are conveyed to our understanding, it followeth, that to oppose her definitions is to resist God himself. I conclude therefore with this argument: Whosoever resisteth that means which infallibly proposes to us God's Word or Revelation, commits a sin which, unrepented, excludes salvation; but whosoever resisteth Christ's visible Church doth resist that means which infallibly proposeth to us God's Word or Revelation. Therefore, whosoever resisteth Christ's visible Church commits a sin, which, unrepented, excludes salvation. Now,

what visible Church was extant when Luther began his pretended Reformation, whether it were the Roman or Protestant Church; and whether he and other Protestants do not oppose that visible Church, which was spread over the world before and in Luther's time, is easy to be determined, and importeth every one most seriously to ponder, as a thing whereon eternal salvation dependeth.

Charity maintained, &c.

If it had been possible, 1st, to define the visible Catholic Church; 2nd, or (that granted) to conceive either how one man can be the Catholic Church, or how millions of men can be a judge-nay, at once oracle and questionists; 3rd, how the opinions of this judge, which must be given in words, can be less liable to objections than other express verbal sentences; 4th, or to conceive the infallibility of fallible men, unattested by miracles or by Scripture from men so attested to be infallible; or, 5th, to clear from a ludicrous circle in argument the founding the infallibility of the Church on Scripture, and yet the infallibility of Scripture on the Church; and, 6th, if the whole were not demonstrated false in fact by the obvious and gross discrepancies of the supposed Catholic Church in different ages; and, 7th, idle as well as false, by the actual many and gross divisions of opinion in various branches of the existing Catholic Church; then it would be difficult to deny the validity of the arguments in this chapter, as it would be unfair, even as it is, not to admit the skill and ability of the arguer as a sturdy and ingenious advocate of an indefensible cause. The Protestant may easily answer the Papist, but it will require more to satisfy the Infidel, who adopts the Papist's difficulties without the killing (ad hominem) absurdities of the Papist's creed. Neither can this be done logically, I think, unless Faith be defined as a

moral state, and not a mere intellectual belief; i. e. but by admitting that, the Heart being the same, the saving Faith is the same in A. and B., though A. should believe and B. disbelieve the possessions in the Gospel to be demoniacal, or the like.

Ibid. P. 383. Appended to the Concluding Chapter.

April 23, 1809.

I have been disappointed in this work, which, however, has confirmed my convictions concerning Mr. Locke's taste and judgment.—Similis simili gaudet. I have stated my opinion of Chillingworth's great inferiority to Stillingfleet's volume on the same plan-it is great indeed. First, this work appears to me prolix, heavy, full of repetitions, and alike deficient in arrangement and that mode of logical acumen which regards the conveyance of arguments. Secondly, I do not deny but that a man of sound unprejudiced mind could scarcely read this book and remain a Catholic, or rather Romanist; but the same must be said of twenty other works before Chillingworth. But I do affirm that it is even more probable that from Popery he would be led by it to Infidelity, Socinianism at least, than to regular Protestantism, Arminian or Calvinistic; that the concessions made to the Romanist, and the doctrines laid down concerning fundamentals, breathe a principle of Latitudinarianism destructive to all principle; while with a tiresome repetition of argument ad hominem, and retortions, there is a deficiency of direct and affirmative evidences and of learning, both Scriptural and from the Fathers.

NOTES ON THE BOOK OF COMMON

PRAYER.

who does not pray.

PRAYER.

A MAN may pray night and day, and yet deceive himself; but no man can be assured of his sincerity, Prayer is faith passing into act; a union of the will and the intellect realising in an intellectual act. It is the whole man that prays. Less than this is wishing, or lip-work; a charm or a mummery. Pray always, says the Apostle; that is, have the habit of prayer, turning your thoughts into acts by connecting them with the idea of the redeeming God, and even so reconverting your actions into thoughts.

THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST.

The best preparation for taking this sacrament, better than any or all of the books or tracts composed for this end, is, to read over and over again, and often on your knees-at all events with a kneeling and praying heart-the Gospel according to St. John, till your mind is familiarised to the contemplation of Christ, the Redeemer and Mediator of mankind, yea, and of every creature, as the living and self-subsisting Word, the very truth of all true being, and the very being of all enduring truth; the reality, which is the substance and unity of all reality; the light which lighteth every man, so that what we call reason is itself a light from that light,

G