peaks of the "Eye of
God's word;" and in the note quotes Mr. Miller, of Worcester College,
who remarks in his Bampton Lectures, on the special power of Scripture,
as having "this Eye, like that of a portrait, uniformly fixed upon us,
turn where we will." The view thus suggested by Mr. Keble, is brought
forward in one of the earliest of the "Tracts for the Times." In No. 8 I
say, "The Gospel is a Law of Liberty. We are treated as sons, not as
servants; not subjected to a code of formal commandments, but addressed
as those who love God, and wish to please Him."

I did not at all dispute this view of the matter, for I made use of it
myself; but I was dissatisfied, because it did not go to the root of the
difficulty. It was beautiful and religious, but it did not even profess
to be logical; and accordingly I tried to complete it by considerations
of my own, which are to be found in my University Sermons, Essay on
Ecclesiastical Miracles, and Essay on Development of Doctrine. My
argument is in outline as follows: that that absolute certitude which we
were able to possess, whether as to the truths of natural theology, or
as to the fact of a revelation, was the result of an _assemblage_ of
concurring and converging probabilities, and that, both according to the
constitution of the human mind and the will of its Maker; that certitude
was a habit of mind, that certainty was a quality of propositions; that
probabilities which did not reach to logical certainty, might suffice
for a mental certitude; that the certitude thus brought about might
equal in measure and strength the certitude which was created by the
strictest scientific demonstration; and that to possess such certitude
might in given cases and to given individuals be a plain duty, though
not to others in other circumstances:--

Moreover, that as there were probabilities which sufficed for certitude,
so there were other probabilities which were legitimately adapted to
create opinion; that it might be quite as much a matter of duty in given
cases and to given persons to have about a fact an opinion of a definite
strength and consistency, as in the case of greater or of more numerous
probabilities it was a duty to have a certitude; that accordingly we
were bound to be more or less sure, on a sort of (as it were) graduated
scale of assent, viz. according as the probabilities attaching to a
professed fact were brought home to us, and as the case might be, to
entertain about