ines of faith and life, held by the body of
Christians who believe that a New Church is signified (in the
Revelation, c. xxi.) by the New Jerusalem, including Answers to
objections, particularly those of the Rev. G. Beaumont, in his work
entitled "The Anti-Swedenborg." Addressed to the reflecting of all
denominations. By Samuel Noble, Minister of Hanover Street Chapel,
London. London, 1826. Ed.]

* * * * *

ESSAY ON FAITH.

Faith may be defined, as fidelity to our own being--so far as such being
is not and cannot become an object of the senses; and hence, by clear
inference or implication, to being generally, as far as the same is not
the object of the senses: and again to whatever is affirmed or
understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same.
This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am
conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto
others as I would they should do unto me;--in other words, a categorical
(that is, primary and unconditional) imperative;--that the maxim
('regula maxima' or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and
outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising
therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings;--this, I
say, is a fact of which I am no less conscious (though in a different
way), nor less assured, than I am of any appearance presented by my
outward senses. Nor is this all; but in the very act of being conscious
of this in my own nature, I know that it is a fact of which all men
either are or ought to be conscious;--a fact, the ignorance of which
constitutes either the non-personality of the ignorant, or the guilt, in
which latter case the ignorance is equivalent to knowledge wilfully
darkened. I know that I possess this consciousness as a man, and not as
Samuel Taylor Coleridge; hence knowing that consciousness of this fact
is the root of all other consciousness, and the only practical
contradistinction of man from the brutes, we name it the conscience; by
the natural absence or presumed presence of which, the law, both divine
and human, determines whether X Y Z be a thing or a person:--the
conscience being that which never to have had places the objects in the
same order of things as the brutes, for example, idiots; and to have
lost which implies either insanity or apostasy. Well--this we have
affirmed is a fact of which every honest