Afterwards the Barrister quotes from Thomas Watson respecting things above comprehension in the study of nature:  “in these cases, the ‘fact’ is evident, the cause lies in obscurity, deeply removed from all the knowledge and penetration of man.”  Then what can we believe respecting these causes?  And if we can believe nothing respecting them, what becomes of them as arguments in support of the proposition that we ought, in religion, to believe what we cannot understand?

Are there not facts in religion, the causes and constitution of which are mysteries?

[Footnote 1:  Hints to the Public and the Legislature on the nature and effect of Evangelical Preaching.  By a Barrister.  Fourth Edition, 1808.]

[Footnote 2:  See Aids to Reflection, p. 14, 4th edition.—­Ed.]

[Footnote 3:  Quart.  Review, vol. ii. p. 187.—­Ed.]

[Footnote 4:  See vol. i., p. 217.—­Ed.]

[Footnote 5: 

“And from this account of obligation it follows, that we can he obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by; for nothing else can be a violent motive to us.  As we should not be obliged to obey the laws, or the magistrate, unless rewards or punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other depended upon our obedience; so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of God.”

‘Paley’s Moral and Polit.  Philosophy’, B. II. c. 2.

“The difference, and the only difference, (’between prudence and duty’,) is this; that in the one case we consider what we shall gain or lose in the present world; in the other case, we consider also what we shall gain or lose in the world to come.”

Ib. c. 3.—­Ed.]

[Footnote 6:  Friend, Vol.  I. Essays X. and XI. 3rd edition—­Ed.]

[Footnote 7:  See Table Talk, pp. 282 and 304. 2d edit.—­Ed.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON DAVISON’S DISCOURSES ON PROPHECY. 1825. [1]

Disc.  IV.  Pt.  I. p. 140.

As to systems of religion alien from Christianity, if any of them have taught the doctrine of eternal life, the reward of obedience, as a dogma of belief, that doctrine is not their boast, but their burden and difficulty; inasmuch as they could never defend it.  They could never justify it on independent grounds of deduction, nor produce their warrant and authority to teach it.  In such precarious and unauthenticated principles it may pass for a conjecture, or pious fraud, or a splendid phantom:  it cannot wear the dignity of truth.

Ah, why did not Mr. Davison adhere to the manly, the glorious, strain of thinking from p. 134 (’Since Prophecy’, &c.) to p. 139. (’that mercy’) of this discourse?  A fact is no subject of scientific demonstration speculatively:  we can only bring analogies, and these Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, and others did bring; but their main argument remains to this day the main argument—­namely, that none but a wicked man dares doubt it.  When it is not in the light of promise, it is in the law of fear, at all times a part of the conscience, and presupposed in all spiritual conviction.