ion, as in every other subject of human reasoning, much depends
upon the order in which we dispose our inquiries. A man who takes up a
system of divinity with a previous opinion that either every part must
be true or the whole false, approaches the discussion with great
disadvantage. No other system, which is founded upon moral evidence,
would bear to be treated in the same manner. Nevertheless, in a certain
degree, we are all introduced to our religious studies under this
prejudication. And it cannot be avoided. The weakness of the human
judgment in the early part of youth, yet its extreme susceptibility of
impression, renders it necessary to furnish it with some opinions, and
with some principles or other. Or indeed, without much express care, or
much endeavour for this purpose, the tendency of the mind of man to
assimilate itself to the habits of thinking and speaking which prevail
around him, produces the same effect. That indifferency and suspense,
that waiting and equilibrium of the judgment, which some require in
religious matters, and which some would wish to be aimed at in the
conduct of education, are impossible to be preserved. They are not given
to the condition of human life.

It is a consequence of this institution that the doctrines of religion
come to us before the proofs; and come to us with that mixture of
explications and inferences from which no public creed is, or can be,
free. And the effect which too frequently follows, from Christianity
being presented to the understanding in this form, is, that when any
articles, which appear as parts of it, contradict the apprehension of
the persons to whom it is proposed, men of rash and confident tempers
hastily and indiscriminately reject the whole. But is this to do
justice, either to themselves or to the religion? The rational way of
treating a subject of such acknowledged importance is, to attend, in the
first place, to the general and substantial truth of its principles, and
to that alone. When we once feel a foundation; when we once perceive a
ground of credibility in its history; we shall proceed with safety to
inquire into the interpretation of its records, and into the doctrines
which have been deduced from them. Nor will it either endanger our
faith, or diminish or alter our motives for obedience, if we should
discover that these conclusions are formed with very different degrees
of probability, and possess very different degrees of importance.

Th