Whenever I meet with an ambiguous or multivocal word, without its
meaning being shown and fixed, I stand on my guard against a sophism. I
dislike this term, 'nature,' in this place. If it mean the 'light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world', it is an inapt term; for
reason is supernatural. Now that reason in man must have been first
actuated by a direct revelation from God, I have myself proved, and do
not therefore deny that faith as the means of salvation was first made
known by revelation; but that reason is incapable of seeing into the
fitness and superiority of these means, or that it is a mystery in any
other sense than as all spiritual truths are mysterious, I do deny and
deem it both a false and a dangerous doctrine.

15 Sept. 1826.


Ib. 6. p.327.

Concerning that faith, hope and charity, without which there can be no
salvation; was there ever any mention made saving only in that law
which God himself hath from heaven revealed? There is not in the world
a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning any of these three,
more than hath, been supernaturally received from the mouth of the
eternal God.


That reason could have discovered these divine truths is one thing; that
when discovered by revelation, it is capable of apprehending the beauty
and excellence of the things revealed is another. I may believe the
latter, while I utterly reject the former. That all these cognitions,
together with the fealty or faithfulness in the will whereby the mind of