This Aphorism should be borne in mind, whenever a theological
_Resolve_ is proposed to us as an article of Faith. Take, for
instance, the determinations passed at the Synod of Dort, concerning
the Absolute Decrees of God in connection with his Omniscience and
Fore-knowledge. Or take the decision in the Council of Trent on the
difference between the two kinds of Transubstantiation, the one in
which both the substance and the accidents are changed, the same
matter remaining--as in the conversion of water to wine at Cana: the
other, in which the matter and the substance are changed, the
accidents remaining unaltered, as in the Eucharist--this latter being
Transubstantiation _par eminence_! Or rather take the still more
tremendous dogma, that it is indispensable to a saving faith carefully
to distinguish the one kind from the other, and to believe both, and
to believe the necessity of believing both in order to Salvation! For
each or either of these _extra-scriptural_ Articles of Faith the
preceding Aphorism supplies a safe criterion. Will the belief tend to
the improvement of any of my moral or intellectual faculties? But
before I can be convinced that a faculty will be _improved_, I must be
assured that it _exists_. On all these dark sayings, therefore, of
Dort or Trent, it is quite sufficient to ask, by what _faculty_,
_organ_, or _inlet_ of knowledge, we are to assure ourselves that the
words _mean_ any thing, or correspond to any object out of our own
mind or even in it: unless indeed the mere craving and striving to
think _on_, after all the materials for thinking have been exhausted,
can be called an _object_. When a number of trust-worthy persons
assure me, that a portion of fluid which they saw to be water, by some
change in the fluid itself or in their senses, suddenly acquired the
colour, taste, smell, and exhilarating property of wine, I perfectly
understand what they tell me, and likewise by what faculties they
might have come to the knowledge of the fact. But if any one of the
number not satisfied with my acquiescence in the fact, should insist
on my believing, that the _matter_ remained the same, the substance
and the accidents having been removed in order to make way for a
different substance with different accidents, I must entreat his
permission to wait till I can discover in myself any faculty, by which
there can be presented to me a matter distinguishable from accidents,
and a substance that is different from both. It is true, I have a
faculty of articulation; but I do not see that it can be _improved_ by
my using it for the formation of words without meaning, or at best,
for the utterance of thoughts, that mean only the act of so thinking,
or of trying so to think. But the end of Religion is the improvement
of our Nature and Faculties. _Ergo_, &c. I sum up the whole in one
great practical Maxim. The Object of _religious_ Contemplation, and of
a truly Spiritual Faith, is "THE WAYS OF GOD TO MAN." Of the Workings
of the Godhead, God himself has told us, _My Ways are not as your
Ways, nor my Thoughts as your Thoughts_.
[81] Slightly altered from Burnet's Preface to Part ii. of his
'History of the Reformation.' See pp. 26, 27, v. ii. Clarendon Press
edition, 1865.--ED.