Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. xi. Conclusion. 299
and others incompletely and but in commencement, that
therefore we may not hold these latter truths so far, how
ever little way that may be, as we do perceive them, and
accept and use them in that sense and manner in which
we find our minds able to entertain them. And thus the
truths of natural and revealed religion, incomprehensible
as they are, are proper subject matter of belief. Our
minds are constituted in such a way, as that we can enter
tain this class of truths, which are not subject matter of
knowledge, and yet fall under some indistinct sort of per
ception, which we feel properly to belong to us. To reject
them, then, because they are seen imperfectly and obscurely,
and because we have the light of clear apprehension and
demonstration in one department, to claim it, and be con
tent with nothing else in another, would be simply unreason
able. The deeper sense of ignorance, then, has no legiti
mate tendency to lessen belief in the truths of natural
and revealed : religion more than this, it has legitimately
even a direct tendency to it strengthen ; because the sense
of ignorance tends properly to produce humility, to subdue,
chasten, and temper the mind. The natural result of see
ing how poor and imperfect creatures we are, and how
small and limited our capacities, is to lower our idea of
ourselves, and so to put us into a frame, in which we are
the more ready to accept and use whatever measure and
kind of truth we may possess in this department. But it
must also, on the other side, be admitted, that there is a
natural tendency, in such a strong contrast as that which
has been described, to overwhelm that class of truths
which has the disadvantage in it ; and that minds which
turn, full of the clear light of apprehension and reasoning,
upon the obscurity of the truths of faith, will be apt to
suppose that they see nothing because they do not see
clearly, and that they have a simple blank before them.
And the natural impatience
of the human temper will
much aid such a conclusion for men are ;
apt to see every
thing in extremes, and when they have less than what they
want, are instantly inclined to think that they have nothing.
In this temper, then, men set down the ideas belonging to