HKB
[79] See Comment on Moral and Religious Aphorism VI., p. 40.--ED.
[80] In a letter to a friend on the mathematical atheists of the French Revolution, La Lande and others, or rather on a young man of distinguished abilities, but an avowed and proselyting partizan of their tenets, I concluded with these words: "The man who will believe nothing but by force of demonstrative evidence (even though it is strictly demonstrable that the demonstrability required would countervene all the purposes of the truth in question, all that render the belief of the same desirable or obligatory) is not in a state of mind to be reasoned with on any subject. But if he further denies the fact of the Law of Conscience, and the essential difference between right and wrong, I confess, he puzzles me. I cannot without gross inconsistency appeal to his Conscience and Moral Sense, or I should admonish him that, as an honest man, he ought to advertize himself, with a Cavete omnes! Scelus sum. And as an honest man myself, I dare not advise him on prudential grounds to keep his opinions secret, lest I should make myself his accomplice, and be helping him on with a wrap-rascal."
APHORISM III.
BURNET AND COLERIDGE.
That Religion is designed to improve the nature and faculties of man, in order to the right governing of our actions, to the securing the peace and progress, external and internal, of individuals and of communities, and lastly, to the rendering us capable of a more perfect state, entitled the kingdom of God, to which the present life is probationary--this is a Truth, which all who have truth only in view, will receive on its own evidence. If such then be the main end of religion altogether (the improvement namely of our nature and faculties), it is plain, that every part of religion is to be judged by its relation to this main end. And since the Christian scheme is religion in its most perfect and effective form, a revealed religion, and therefore, in a special sense proceeding from that Being who made us and knows what we are, of course therefore adapted to the needs and capabilities of human nature; nothing can be a part of this holy faith that is not duly proportioned to this end.[81]
COMMENT.