fore called "proud reason,"
he now designates as Conscience, Understanding, and perhaps the Holy
Spirit. He refused to allow the right of the Spiritualist to urge,
that _the Bible_ contains contradictions and immoralities, and
therefore cannot be received; but he claims a full right to urge
that _the Church_ has justified contradictions and immoralities, and
therefore is not to be submitted to. The perception that this
position is inconsistent, and, to him who discerns the inconsistency,
dishonest, is every year driving Protestants to Rome. And _in
principle_ there are only two possible religions: the Personal and the
Corporate; the Spiritual and the External. I do not mean to say that
in Romanism there is nothing but what is Corporate and External; for
that is impossible to human nature: but that this is what the theory
of their argument demands; and their doctrine of Implicit[4] (or
Virtual) Faith entirely supersedes intellectual perception as well as
intellectual conviction. The theory of each church is the force which
determines to what centre the whole shall gravitate. However men may
talk of spirituality, yet let them once enact that the freedom of
individuals shall be absorbed in a corporate conscience, and you
find that the narrowest heart and meanest intellect sets the rule of
conduct for the whole body.

It has been often observed how the controversies of the Trinity and
Incarnation depended on the niceties of the Greek tongue. I do not
know whether it has ever been inquired, what confusion of thought
was shed over Gentile Christianity, from its very origin, by the
imperfection of the New Testament Greek. The single Greek[5] word
[Greek: pistis] needs probably three translations into our far more
accurate tongue,--viz., Belief, Trust, Faith; but especially Belief
and Faith have important contrasts. Belief is purely intellectual;
Faith is properly spiritual. Hence the endless controversy about
Justification by [Greek: pistis], which has so vexed Christians; hence
the slander cast on _unbelievers_ or _misbelievers_ (when they can
no longer be burned or exiled), as though they were _faithless_ and
_infidels_.

But nothing of this ought to be allowed to blind us to the truly
spiritual and holy developments of historical Christianity,--much
less, make us revert to the old Paganism or Pantheism which it
supplanted.--The great doctrine on which all practical religion
depends,--the doctrine which nursed the infancy