WHETHER THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE CONCLUSIVE OR INCONCLUSIVE, AND NOT MERELY BY OUR OWN CHOICE
It is written that "Faith is the gift of God." Be it so, but is faith any more the gift of God than reflection, memory or reason are his gifts? Was it not for memory, we could not retain in our minds the judgment which we have passed upon things; and was it not for reasoning, in either a regular or irregular manner, or partly both, there could be no such thing as judging or believing; so that God could not bestow the gift of faith separate from the gift of reason, faith being the mere consequence of reasoning, either right or wrong, or in a greater or less degree, as has been previously argued.
Still there is a knotty text of scripture to surmount, viz: "He that believeth shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." This text is considered as crowding hard upon unbelievers in Christianity; but when it is critically examined, it will be found not to militate at all against them, but is merely a Jesuitical fetch to overawe some and make others wonder. We will premise, that an unbeliever is destitute of faith, which is the cause of his being thus denominated. The Christian believes the gospel to be true and of divine authority, the Deist believes that it is not true and not of divine authority; so that the Christian and Deist are both of them believers, and according to the express words of the text, "shall be saved," and a Deist may as well retort upon a Christian and call him an infidel, because he differs in faith from him, as a Christian may upon the Deist; for there is the same impropriety in applying the cant of infidelity to either, as both are believers; and it is impossible for us to believe contrary to our judgments or the dictates of understanding, whether it be rightly informed or not. Why then may there not in both denominations be honest men, who are seeking after the truth, and who may have an equal right to expect the favor and salvation of God.
CHAPTER IX.
SECTION I. A TRINITY OF PERSONS CANNOT EXIST IN THE DIVINE ESSENCE...
WHETHER THE PERSONS BE SUPPOSED TO BE FINITE OR INFINITE: WITH REMARKS ON ST. ATHENASIUS'S CREED
Of all errors which have taken place in religion, none have been so fatal to it as those that immediately respect the divine nature. Wrong notions of a God, or of his providence, sap its very foundation in theory and practice, as is evident from the superstition discoverable among the major part of mankind; who, instead of worshipping the true God, have been by some means or other infatuated to pay divine homage to mere creatures, or to idols made with hands, or to such as have no existence but in their own fertile imaginations.
God being incomprehensible to us, we cannot understand all that perfection in which the divine essence consists, we can nevertheless (negatively) comprehend many things, in which (positively) the divine essence does not and cannot consist.