By the eye of reason through the telescope of faith, that is, Revelation, we may see what without this telescope we could never have known to exist. But as one that shuts the eye hard, and with violence curls the eye-lid, forces a fantastic fire from the crystalline humour, and espies a light that never shines, and sees thousands of little fires that never burn; so is he that blinds the eye of reason, and pretends to see by an eye of faith. He makes little images of notions, and some atoms dance before him; but he is not guided by the light, nor instructed by the proposition, but sees like a man in his sleep. IN NO CASE CAN TRUE REASON AND A RIGHT FAITH OPPOSE EACH OTHER.
APHORISM XXIII.--Less on my own account, than in the hope of fore-arming my youthful friends, I add one other transcript from Bishop Taylor, as from a writer to whose name no taint or suspicion of Calvinistic or schismatical tenets can attach, and for the purpose of softening the offence which, I cannot but foresee, will be taken at the positions asserted in paragraph the first of Aphorism VII., and the documental proofs of the same in the next pages; and this by a formidable party composed of men ostensibly of the most dissimilar creeds, _regular_ Church-divines, voted orthodox by a great majority of suffrages, and the so-called Free-thinking Christians, and Unitarian divines. It is the _former_ class alone that I wish to conciliate: so far at least as it may be done by removing the aggravation of _novelty_ from the offensive article. And surely the simple re-assertion of one of "the two great things," which Bishop Taylor could assert as a fact,--which, he took for granted, that no Christian would think of controverting,--should at least be controverted without bitterness by his successors in the Church. That which was perfectly safe and orthodox in 1657, in the judgment of a devoted Royalist and Episcopalian, ought to be at most but a venial heterodoxy in 1825. For the rest, I am prepared to hear in answer--what has already been so often, and with such theatrical effect dropped, as an _extinguisher_, on my arguments--the famous concluding period of one of the chapters in Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, declared by Dr. Parr to be the _finest_ prose passage in English literature.[139] Be it so. I bow to so great an authority. But if the learned Doctor would impose it on me as the _truest_ as well as the finest, or expect me to admire the logic equally with the rhetoric--αφισταμαι--I start off! As I have been _un-English_ enough to find in Pope's tomb-epigram on Sir Isaac Newton nothing better than a gross and wrongful falsehood, conveyed in an enormous and irreverent hyperbole; so with regard to this passage in question, free as it is from all faults of taste, I have yet the hardihood to confess, that in the sense in which the words _discover_ and _prove_, are here used and intended, I am not convinced of the truth of the principle, (that he alone discovers who proves), and I question the correctness of the particular case, brought as instance and confirmation. I _doubt_ the validity of the assertion as a _general_ rule; and I _deny_ it, as applied to matters of _faith_, to the verities of religion, in the belief of which there must always be somewhat of moral election, "an act of the _Will_ in it as well as of the Understanding, as much _love_ in it as discursive power. True Christian Faith must have in it something of in-evidence, something that must be made up by duty and by obedience."[140] But most readily do I admit, and most fervently do I contend, that the miracles worked by Christ, both as miracles and as fulfilments of prophecy, both as signs and as wonders, made plain discovery, and gave unquestionable proof, of his divine character and authority; that they were to the whole Jewish nation true and appropriate evidences, that HE was indeed come who had promised and declared to their forefathers, _Behold your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense_. _He will come and save you._[141] I receive them as proofs, therefore, of the truth of every word, which he taught who was himself THE WORD: and as sure evidences of the final victory over death and of the life to come, in that they were manifestations of HIM, who said: _I am the resurrection and the Life!_