lation from God can possibly contradict or override either: for they are the only channels through which a Revelation can reach us. It is impossible to use stronger language than he does on this; and it is strange, indeed, that he should have been misjudged here:—
I express myself with caution lest I should be mistaken to vilify reason, which is, indeed, the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself, or be misunderstood to assert that a supposed revelation cannot be proved false from internal characters. For it may contain clear immoralities, and contradictions, and either of these would prove it false (Anal, II. iii. 3).
Again:—
It is the province of reason and conscience to judge of the morality of Scripture, not whether it contains things different from what we should have expected from a wise, just, and good Being, but whether it contains things plainly contradictory to wisdom, justice, and goodness; to what the light of nature teaches us of God.
Now what is the just consequence from all these things? Not that reason is no judge of what is offered to us as being of Divine revelation. For this would be to infer that we are unable to judge of anything, because we are unable to judge of all things. Reason can, and it ought to, judge not only of the meaning, but also of the morality and the evidence of revelation (Anal. II. iii. 26).
And yet again, he reiterates with anxiety, while pleading our incompetence to judge the methods of Revelation:—
This argument is urged, as I hope it will be understood, with great caution of not vilifying the faculty of reason which is 'the Candle of the Lord within us': though it can afford no light where it does not shine, nor judge where it has no principles to judge upon (Anal. II. ix. 7).
For him, the limitations of our faculties are drawn from their knowledge, not from their ignorance; from their exercise, not from their impotence. It is not because the scheme presented to them baffles their power, that they own it to be beyond them. On the contrary, it is because they understand it; and, in understanding
