capacity." (Butler's Analogy, part ii. c. 6.)

II. These modes of communication would leave no place for the admission
of internal evidence; which ought, perhaps, to bear a considerable part
in the proof of every revelation, because it is a species of evidence
which applies itself to the knowledge, love, and practice, of virtue,
and which operates in proportion to the degree of those qualities which
it finds in the person whom it addresses. Men of good dispositions,
amongst Christians, are greatly affected by the impression which the
Scriptures themselves make upon their minds. Their conviction is much
strengthened by these impressions. And this perhaps was intended to be
one effect to be produced by the religion. It is likewise true, to
whatever cause we ascribe it (for I am not in this work at liberty to
introduce the Christian doctrine of grace or assistance, or the
Christian promise that, "if any man will do his will, he shall know of
the doctrine, whether it be of God" John vii. 17.),--it is true, I say,
that they who sincerely act, or sincerely endeavour to act, according to
what they believe, that is, according to the just result of the
probabilities, or, if you please, the possibilities in natural and
revealed religion, which they themselves perceive, and according to a
rational estimate of consequences, and, above all, according to the just
effect of those principles of gratitude and devotion which even the view
of nature generates in a well-ordered mind, seldom fail of proceeding
farther. This also may have been exactly what was designed.

Whereas, may it not be said that irresistible evidence would confound
all characters and all dispositions? would subvert rather than promote
the true purpose of the Divine counsels; which is, not to produce
obedience by a force little short of mechanical constraint, (which
obedience would be regularity, not virtue, and would hardly perhaps
differ from that which inanimate bodies pay to the laws impressed upon
their nature), but to treat moral agents agreeably to what they are;
which is done, when light and motives are of such kinds, and are
imparted in such measures, that the influence of them depends upon the
recipients themselves? "It is not meet to govern rational free agents in
via by sight and sense. It would be no trial or thanks to the most
sensual wretch to forbear sinning, if heaven and hell were open to his
sight. That spiritual vision and fruition is our state in