Men engaged in teaching and preaching a religion, a doctrine, a religious reform, sometimes whilst appealing to the whole energy of the human mind in its state of liberty, succeed in producing in their disciples an entire, profound, and powerful conviction of the truth of their teaching. This conviction is called _Faith_; a name which neither masters and disciples will repudiate, nor even their adversaries disallow. { 156} Faith then is only a profound and imperious conviction of the truth of a dogma of religion; it matters little whether the conviction has been acquired by way of reasoning, or has been generated by controversy, or by free and rigorous examination; that which gives to it its character, and entitles it to the name of _Faith_, is its energy, is the empire which that energy gives to it over the whole man. Such at every time was the faith of the great Reformers, and more especially in the sixteenth century, such the faith of their most illustrious disciples, of Calvin after Luther, and Knox after Calvin.
The same men have preached the same doctrine to persons whom it was impossible for them to convince by the use of reasoning, by an appeal to examination, or to science, to women and crowds of persons incapable alike of laborious study and of lengthened reflection. They spoke to the imagination, to the moral affections, where the persons whom they addressed were prone to feel emotion, and to believe in consequence of emotion. They gave the name of _Faith_ to the result of their action, just as they had done so to the result of the process essentially intellectual of which I was before speaking. { 157} Faith thus instilled was a religious conviction, not acquired by reasoning, and deriving its origin in human sensibility. This is the idea of faith as entertained by the Mystic Sects.
Appeals to human sensibility and human emotion have not always sufficed to generate faith. Another spring of human influence has been resorted to; and men have been commanded to adhere to practices and to form habits. Man must sooner or later attach ideas to the acts which are habitual to him, and attribute a meaning to that which produces in him a constant effect. The mind was led to the belief of the principles which had given birth to certain practices and habits. A new kind of faith appeared, it had for its principle and dominant characteristic, the submission of the mind to an authority invested with the right at once to govern man's life and to regulate his thought.