1. Before setting down a definition of Faith and of Reason, it will be right to consider what is the popular notion of Faith and Reason, in contrast with each other.

“I have not yet said what Reason really is, or what is its relation to Faith, but have merely contrasted the two together, taking Reason in the sense popularly ascribed to the word,” x. 45.

Vide also xii. 7, 11, 36; xiii. 1, 4; xiv. 32.

2. According to this popular sense, Faith is the judging on weak grounds in religious matters, and Reason on strong grounds. Faith involves easiness, and Reason slowness in accepting the claims of Religion; by Faith is meant a feeling or sentiment, by Reason an exercise of common sense; Faith is conversant with conjectures or presumptions, Reason with proofs.

“Whatever be the real distinction and relation between Faith and Reason, the contrast which would be made between them on a popular view, is this,—that Reason requires strong evidence before it assents, and Faith is content with weaker evidence,” x. 17.

“Faith and Reason are popularly contrasted with each other; Faith consisting of certain exercises of Reason which proceed mainly on presumption, and Reason of certain exercises which proceed mainly upon proof,” xii. 3.

Vide also 2, 7, 10, 36; and v. 19; x. 26, 32; xi. 17.

3. But now, to speak more definitely, what ought we to understand by the faculty of Reason largely understood?

“By Reason is properly understood any process or act of the mind, by which, from knowing one thing, it advances on to know another,” xii. 2.

Vide also xi. 6, 7; xiii. 7, 9; xiv. 28.

4. The process of the Reasoning Faculty is either explicit or implicit: that is, either with or without a direct recognition, on the part of the mind, of the starting-point and path of thought from and through which it comes to its conclusion.

“All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason. We may denote these two exercises of mind as reasoning and arguing,” xiii. 9. Vide the whole of the discourse.

5. The process of reasoning, whether implicit or explicit, is the act of one and the same faculty, to which also belongs the power of analyzing that process, and of thereby passing from implicit to explicit. Reasoning, thus retrospectively employed in analyzing itself, results in a specific science or art, called logic, which is a sort of rhetoric, bringing out to advantage the implicit acts on which it has proceeded.

“Clearness in argument is not indispensable to reasoning well. The process of reasoning is complete in itself, and independent; the analysis is but an account of it,” xiii. 10; vide 8.

“The warfare between Error and Truth is necessarily advantageous to the former, as being conducted by set speech or treatise; and this, not only from … the deficiency of truth in the power of eloquence, and even of words, but moreover, from the very neatness and definiteness of method, required in a written or spoken argument. Truth is vast and far stretching, viewed as a system … hence it can hardly be exhibited in a given number of sentences. … Its advocate, unable to exhibit more than a fragment of the whole, must round off its rugged extremities, etc. … This, indeed, is the very art of composition,” &c., v. 21.

“They who wish to shorten the dispute, look out for some strong and manifest argument, which may be stated tersely, handled conveniently, and urged rhetorically,” &c., xiii. 36.

Vide xiv. 30.

6. Again: there are two methods of reasoning—à priori, and à posteriori; from antecedent probabilities, or verisimilitudes, and from evidence, of which the method of verisimilitude more naturally belongs to implicit reasoning, and the method of evidence to explicit.

“Proofs may be strong or slight, not in themselves, but according to the circumstances under which the doctrine professes to come to us, which they are brought to prove; and they will have a great or small effect upon our minds, according as we admit those circumstances or not. Now, the admission of those circumstances involves a variety of antecedent views, presumptions, implications, associations, and the like, many of which it is very difficult to detect and analyze,” &c., xiii. 33.

Vide also 9, and xii. 36.

7. Again:—though the Reasoning Faculty is in its nature one and the same in all minds, it varies, without limit, in point of strength, as existing in the concrete, that is, in individuals, and that, according to the subject-matter to which it is applied. Thus, a man may reason well on matters of trade, taken as his subject, but be simply unable to bring out into shape his reasoning upon them, or to write a book about them, because he has not the talent of analyzing—that is, of reasoning upon his own reasonings, or finding his own middle terms.

“How a man reasons is as much a mystery as how he remembers. He remembers better and worse on different subject-matters, and he reasons better and worse. The gift or talent may be distinct, but the process of reasoning is the same,” xiii. 10.

Vide also xi. 6.

8. This inequality of the faculty in one and the same individual, with respect to different subject-matters, arises from two causes:—from want of experience and familiarity in the details of a given subject-matter; and from ignorance of the principles or axioms, often recondite, which belong to it.

“The man who neglected experiments, and trusted to his vigour of talent, would be called a theorist; and the blind man who seriously professed to lecture on light and colours could scarcely hope to gain an audience … He might discourse with ease and fluency, till we almost forgot his lamentable deprivation; at length on a sudden, he would lose himself in some inexpressibly great mistake,” iv. 8.

“However full and however precise our producible grounds may be, however systematic our method, however clear and tangible our evidence, yet, when our argument is traced down to its simple elements, there must ever be something which is incapable of proof,” xi. 18.

9. Hence there are three senses of the word “Reason,” over and above the large and true sense. Since what is not brought out into view cannot be acknowledged as existing, it comes to pass that exercises of reasoning not explicit are commonly ignored. Hence by Reason, relatively to Religion, is meant, first, expertness in logical argument.

“Reason has a power of analysis and criticism in all opinions and conduct, and nothing is true or right but what may be justified, and, in a certain sense, proved by it; and unless the doctrines received by Faith are approvable by Reason, they have no claim to be regarded as true,” x. 13.

Vide also 14, 16.

10. And again, since Evidences are more easily analyzed than verisimilitudes, hence reasonings, that is, investigations, on the subject of Religion, are commonly considered to be nothing but à posteriori arguments; and Reason relatively to Religion becomes a faculty of framing Evidences. This, again, is a popular sense of the word, as applied to the subject of Religion, and a second sense in which I have used it.

“Reason is influenced by direct and definite proof: the mind is supposed to reason severely, when it rejects antecedent proof of a fact, rejects every thing but the actual evidence producible in its favour,” x. 26.

“Reason, as the word is commonly used, rests on the evidence,” x. 32.

11. The word “Reason” is still more often used in these Discourses in a third sense, viz., for a certain popular abuse of the faculty; viz., when it occupies itself upon Religion, without a due familiar acquaintance with its subject-matter, or without a use of the first principles proper to it. This so-called Reason is in Scripture designated “the wisdom of the world;” that is, the reasoning of secular minds about Religion, or reasonings about Religion based upon secular maxims, which are intrinsically foreign to it; parallel to the abuse of Reason in other subject-matters, as when chemical truths are made the axioms and starting-points in medical science, or the doctrine of final causes is introduced into astronomical or geological inquiries.

Hence one of these Discourses is entitled “The Usurpations of Reason;” and in the course of it mention is made of “captious Reason,” “forward Reason,” &c. Vide note on iv. 9.

12. Faith is properly an assent, and an assent without doubt, or a certitude.

“Faith is an acceptance of things as real,” xi. 9.

“Faith simply accepts testimony,” x. 8.

“Faith is not identical with its grounds and its object,” xiii. 4

“Faith starts with probabilities, yet it ends in peremptory statements; it believes an informant amid doubt, yet accepts his information without doubt,” xiv. 34.

Vide also 39; x. 34; xi. 1; xv. 3.

13. Since, in accepting a conclusion, there is a virtual recognition of its premisses, an act of Faith may be said (improperly) to include in it the reasoning process which is its antecedent, and to be in a certain aspect an exercise of Reason; and thus is coordinate, and in contrast, with the three (improper) senses of the word “Reason” above enumerated, viz., explicit, evidential, and secular Reason.

“If Reason is the faculty of gaining knowledge upon grounds given, an act or process of Faith is an exercise of Reason, as being an instrument of indirect knowledge concerning things external to us,” xi. 8, 9.

14. Faith, viewed in contrast with Reason in these three senses, is implicit in its acts, adopts the method of verisimilitude, and starts from religious first principles.

Vide iv. 6; x. 27, 44; xi. 1, 25; xii. 3, 27, 37.

15. Faith is kept from abuse, e.g. from falling into superstition, by a right moral state of mind, or such dispositions and tempers as religiousness, love of holiness and truth, &c.

This is the subject of the twelfth discourse; in which, however, stress ought to have been also laid upon the availableness, against such an abuse of Faith, of Reason, in the first and second (improper) senses of the word.

The Author has lately pursued this whole subject at considerable length in his “Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent.”