is conduct of the understanding, dictated by every rule of right
reasoning, will uphold personal Christianity, even in those countries in
which it is established under forms the most liable to difficulty and
objection. It will also have the further effect of guarding us against
the prejudices which are wont to arise in our minds to the disadvantage
of religion, from observing the numerous controversies which are carried
on amongst its professors; and likewise of inducing a spirit of lenity
and moderation in our judgment, as well as in our treatment of those who
stand, in such controversies, upon sides opposite to ours. What is clear
in Christianity we shall find to be sufficient, and to be infinitely
valuable; what is dubious, unnecessary to be decided, or of very
subordinate importance, and what is most obscure, will teach us to bear
with the opinions which others may have formed upon the same subject. We
shall say to those who the most widely dissent from us, what Augustine
said to the worst heretics of his age; "Illi in vos saeviant, qui
nasciunt, cum quo labore verum inveniatur, et quam difficile caveantur
errores;---qui nesciunt, cure quanta difficultate sanetur oculus
interioris hominis;--qui nesciunt, quibus suspiriis et gemitibus fiat ut
ex quantulacumque parte possit intelligi Deus.". (Aug. contra. Ep. Fund.
Cap. ii. n. 2,3.)

A judgment, moreover, which is once pretty well satisfied of the general
truth of the religion will not only thus discriminate in its doctrines,
but will possess sufficient strength to overcome the reluctance of the
imagination to admit articles of faith which are attended with
difficulty of apprehension, if such articles of faith appear to be truly
parts of the revelation. It was to be expected beforehand, that what
related to the economy and to the persons of the invisible world, which
revelation profess to do, and which, if true, it actually does, should
contain some points remote from our analogies, and from the
comprehension of a mind which hath acquired all its ideas from sense and
from experience.

It hath been my care in the preceding work to preserve the separation
between evidences and doctrines as inviolable as I could; to remove from
the primary question all considerations which have been unnecessarily
joined with it; and to offer a defence to Christianity which every
Christian might read without seeing the tenets in which he had been
brought up attacked or decried: and it al