To the reader thus armed and prepared, I now venture to present the so called mysteries of Faith, that is, the peculiar tenets and especial constituents of Christianity, or Religion in spirit and in truth. In right order I must have commenced with the Articles of the Trinity and Apostacy, including the question respecting the Origin of Evil, and the Incarnation of the WORD. And could I have followed this order, some difficulties that now press on me would have been obviated.--But (as has already been explained) the limits of the present volume rendered it alike impracticable and inexpedient; for the necessity of my argument would have called forth certain hard though most true sayings, respecting the hollowness and tricksy sophistry of the so called "Natural Theology," "Religion of Nature," "Light of Nature," and the like, which a brief exposition could not save from innocent misconceptions, much less protect against plausible misinterpretation.--And yet both Reason and Experience have convinced me, that in the greater number of our ALOGI, who feed on the husks of Christianity, the disbelief of the Trinity, the Divinity of Christ included, has its origin and support in the assumed self-evidence of this Natural Theology, and in their ignorance of the insurmountable difficulties which (on the same mode of reasoning) press upon the fundamental articles of their own Remnant of a Creed. But arguments, which would prove the falsehood of a known truth, must themselves be false, and can prove the falsehood of no other position in _eodem genere_.
This _hint_ I have thrown out as a _spark_ that may perhaps fall where it will kindle. And worthily might the wisest of men make inquisition into the three momentous points here spoken of, for the purposes of speculative insight, and for the formation of enlarged and systematic views of the destination of man, and the dispensation of God. But the _practical_ Inquirer (I speak not of those who inquire for the gratification of curiosity, and still less of those who labour as students only to shine as disputants; but of one, who seeks the truth, because he feels the want of it,) the practical Inquirer, I say, hath already placed his foot on the rock, if he have satisfied himself that whoever needs not a Redeemer is more than human. Remove for him the difficulties and objections, that oppose or perplex his belief of a crucified Saviour; convince him of the reality of sin, which is impossible without a knowledge of its true nature and inevitable consequences; and then satisfy him as to the _fact_ historically, and as to the truth spiritually, of a redemption therefrom by Christ; do this for him, and there is little fear that he will permit either logical quirks or metaphysical puzzles to contravene the plain dictate of his common sense, that the Sinless One that redeemed mankind from sin, must have been more than man; and that He who brought Light and Immortality into the world, could not in his own nature have been an inheritor of Death and Darkness. It is morally impossible that a man with these convictions should suffer the objection of Incomprehensibility (and this on a subject of _Faith_) to overbalance the manifest absurdity and contradiction in the notion of a mediator between God and the human race, at the same infinite distance from God as the race for whom he mediates.