Alike destitute of knowledge and of faith to oppose to the testimony of apostles, prophets, and myriads of contemporaneous witnesses, what has the skeptic to present against the numerous and diversified evidences of the gospel? Nothing in the universe but his _doubts_. He can, in strict conformity to language and fact, only say, he doubts whether it be true. He is, then, legitimately no more than an inmate of Doubting Castle. His fortification is built up of doubts and misgivings, cemented by antipathy. Farther than this the powers of nature and of reason can not go.
How far these doubts are rational, scientific, and modest, may yet appear in the sequel; meanwhile, we only survey the premises which the infidel occupies, and the forces he has to bring into the action. These, may we not say, are already logically ascertained to be an army of doubts only.
Some talk of the immodesty, others of the folly, others of the maliciousness of the unbeliever; but not to deal in harsh or uncourteous epithets, may we not say, that it is most unphilosophic to dogmatize against the gospel on the slender grounds of sheer dubiety. No man, deserving the name of a _philosopher_, can ever appear among the crusading forces of pamphleteers and declaimers against the faith of Christians, for two of the best reasons in the world; he has nothing better to substitute for the motives, the restraining fears to the wicked, and the animating hopes to the righteous, which the gospel tenders; and he has nothing to oppose to its claims but the weakness and uncertainty of his doubts. Franklin was a philosopher, but Paine was a madman. The former doubted, but never dogmatized—never opposed the gospel, but always discountenanced and discouraged the infidel; the latter gave to his doubts the authority of oracles, and madly attempted to silence the Christian’s artillery by the licentious scoffings of the most extravagant and unreasonable skepticism.
Modesty is the legitimate daughter of true philosophy; but dogmatism, unless the offspring of infallible authority, is the ill-bred child of ignorance and arrogance. Every man, then, who seeks to make proselytes to his skepticism by converting his doubts into arguments, is anything but a philosopher or a philanthropist.