23. Perhaps “all this you can bear. It is tolerable enough: and if we spoke only of being saved by love, you should have no great objection: but you do not comprehend what we say of being saved by faith.” I know you do not. You do not in any degree comprehend what we mean by that expression; have patience then, and I will tell you yet again. By those words, we are saved by faith, we mean, that the moment a man receives that faith which is above described, he is saved from doubt and fear, and sorrow of heart, by a peace that passes all understanding; from the heaviness of a wounded spirit, by joy unspeakable; and from his sins, of whatsoever kind they were; from his vicious desires, as well as words and actions, by the love of God, and of all mankind, then shed abroad in his heart.
24. We grant, nothing is more unreasonable, than to imagine that such mighty effects as these, can be wrought by that poor, empty, insignificant thing, which the world calls faith, and you among them. But supposing there be such a faith on the earth, as that which the apostle speaks of, such an intercourse between God and the soul, what is too hard for such a faith? You yourselves may conceive, that all things are possible to him that thus believeth: to him that thus walks with God, that is now a citizen of heaven, an inhabitant of eternity. If therefore you will contend with us, you must change the ground of your attack. You must flatly deny there is any faith upon earth: but perhaps this you might think too large step. You cannot do this, without a secret condemnation in your own breast. O that you would at length cry to God for that heavenly gift! Whereby alone this truly reasonable religion, this beneficent love of God and man, can be planted in your heart.
25. If you say, “But those that profess this faith are the most unreasonable of all men;” I ask, “Who are those that profess this faith?” Perhaps you do not personally know such a man in the world. Who are they that so much as profess to have this evidence of things not seen? That profess to see him that is invisible? To hear the voice of God, and to have his Spirit ever witnessing with their spirits, that they are the children of God? I fear you will find few that even profess this faith, among the large numbers of those who are called believers.
*26. “However, there are enough that profess themselves Christians.” Yea, too many, God knoweth: too many that confute their vain professions, by the whole tenour of their lives. I will allow all you can say on this head, and perhaps more than all. ’Tis now some years since I was engaged unawares in a conversation with a strong reasoner, who at first urged the wickedness of the American Indians, as a bar to our hope of converting them to Christianity. But when I mentioned their temperance, justice, and veracity, (according to the accounts I had then received) it was asked, “Why, if those Heathens are such men as these, what will they gain by being made Christians? What would they gain by being such Christians as we see every where round about us?” I could not deny, they would lose, not gain, by such a Christianity as this. Upon which she added, “Why, what else do you mean by Christianity?” My plain answer was, What do you apprehend to be more valuable than good sense, good nature, and good manners? All these are contained, and that in the highest degree, in what I mean by Christianity. Good sense, (so called) is but a poor, dim shadow of what Christians call faith. Good nature is only a faint, distant resemblance of Christian charity. And good manners, if of the most finished kind that nature assisted by art can attain to, is but a dead picture of that holiness of conversation, which is the image of God visibly expressed. All these put together by the art of God, I call Christianity. “Sir, if this be Christianity, (said my opponent in amaze) I never saw a christian in my life.”
27. Perhaps it is the same case with you. If so, I am grieved for you, and can only wish, ’till you do see a living proof of this, that you would not say, you see a christian. For this is scriptural christianity, and this alone. Whenever therefore you see an unreasonable man, you see one who perhaps calls himself by that name, but is no more a christian than he is an angel. So far as he departs from true, genuine reason, so far he departs from christianity. Do not say, this is only asserted, not proved. It is undeniably proved by the original charter of christianity. We appeal to this, to the written word. If any man’s temper, or words, or actions are contradictory to right reason; it is evident to a demonstration, they are contradictory to this. Produce any possible or conceivable instance, and you will find the fact is so. The lives therefore of those who are called christians, is no just objection to christianity.
28. We join with you then in desiring a religion founded on reason, and every way agreeable thereto. But one question still remains to be asked, what do you mean by reason? I suppose you mean the eternal reason, or, the nature of things: The nature of God, and the nature of man, with the relations necessarily subsisting between them. Why, this is the very religion we preach: a religion evidently founded on, and every way agreeable to eternal reason, to the essential nature of things. Its foundation stands on the nature of God and the nature of man, together with their mutual relations. And it is every way suitable thereto: to the nature of God; for it begins in knowing him; and where but in the true knowledge of God, can you conceive true religion to begin? It goes on in loving him, and all mankind, (for you cannot but imitate whom you love:) It ends in serving him; in doing his will; in obeying him whom we know and love.
29. It is every way suited to the nature of man; for it begins in a man’s knowing himself; knowing himself to be what he really is, foolish, vicious, miserable. It goes on to point out the remedy for this, to make him truly wise, virtuous, and happy; as every thinking mind (perhaps from some implicit remembrance of what it originally was) longs to be.
It finishes all, by restoring the due relations between God and man; by uniting for ever the tender Father, and the grateful, obedient Son; the great Lord of all, and the faithful servant, doing not his own will, but the will of him that sent him.
30. But perhaps by reason you mean, the faculty of reasoning, of inferring one thing from another.
There are many, it is confessed, (particularly those who are stiled mystic divines) that utterly decry the use of reason, thus understood, in religion: nay, that condemn all reasoning concerning the things of God, as utterly destructive of true religion.