Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1838 edition. Excerpt: ... "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." After considering the office of faith, it fitly follows to inquire what it is, both in itself, and as existing in the regenerate. This I propose now to do, and in doing it shall have the guidance of a text, which approaches as nearly as any statement in Scripture to a formal definition. Our Church has no where defined faith. The Articles are entirely silent; and though theHomilies contain many popular descriptions, they present, as is natural, nothing consistent and accurate. Religious faith is "the substance," or the realizing of what as yet is not seen, but only "hoped for;" it is the making present what is future. Again: it is "the evidence" of what is not seen, that is, the ground or medium of proof, on or through which it is accepted as really existing. In the way of nature, we ascertain the things around and before us, by sight; and things which are to be, by reason; but faith is our informant about things present which we do not see, and things future which we cannot forecast. And as sight contemplates form and colour, and reason the processes of argument, so faith rests on the divine word as the token and criterion of truth. And as the mind trusts to sense and reason, on a natural instinct, which it freely uses prior to experience, so in a parallel way, a moral instinct, supernaturally implanted, and independent of experience, is its impelling and assuring principle in assenting to revelation as divine. By faith then is meant the mind's perception or knowledge of heavenly things, arising from an instinctive trust in the divinity or truth of the external word, informing it concerning them'. Whether it acts upon that knowledge so obtained, depends upon...