In these five paragraphs I have enumerated and explained the several
powers or forces belonging or incidental to human nature, which in
all matters of reason the man is bound either to subjugate or
subordinate to reason. The application to faith follows of its own
accord. The first or most indefinite sense of faith is fidelity:
then fidelity under previous contract or particular moral obligation.
In this sense faith is fealty to a rightful superior: faith is the
duty of a faithful subject to a rightful governor. Then it is
allegiance in active service; fidelity to the liege lord under
circumstances, and amid the temptations of usurpation, rebellion, and
intestine discord. Next we seek for that rightful superior on our
duties to whom all our duties to all other superiors, on our
faithfulness to whom all our bounden relations to all other objects
of fidelity, are founded. We must inquire after that duty in which
all others find their several degrees and dignities, and from which
they derive their obligative force. We are to find a superior, whose
rights, including our duties, are presented to the mind in the very
idea of that Supreme Being, whose sovereign prerogatives are
predicates implied in the subjects, as the essential properties of a
circle are co-assumed in the first assumption of a circle,
consequently underived, unconditional, and as rationally
unsusceptible, so probably prohibitive, of all further question. In
this sense, then, faith is fidelity, fealty, allegiance of the moral
nature to God, in opposition to all usurpation, and in resistance to
all temptation to the placing any other claim above or equal with our
fidelity to God.

The will of God is the last ground and final aim of all our duties,
and to that the whole man is to be harmonised by subordination,
subjugation, or suppression alike in commission and omission. But