Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Note IV. 325
advantage in the argument ; that his opponent claims a
distinctness for them which mental analysis rejects, and
in his alarm, as if the foundations of truth were shaken
when these great ideas were discovered to be incomplete
and obscure, shows a radical misapprehension as to the
nature of the fundamental truths, on which much of
philosophy and the whole of religion rests. No error can
be greater than that of supposing that, when ideas are
obscure, they are not rational ones, and then to add, as
Stillingfleet does, if we cannot come at the rational idea
of a thing, we can have no principle of certainty to go
upon. Religion rests upon a set of truths which exactly
miss the condition of rational truth here laid down. To
disprove this condition, then, to lay down the consistency
of a rational character with an obscure and indistinct one
in ideas, is not to overthrow religion, but support it on
the most essential head. So surely do we find that no
discoveries in philosophy, metaphysical or natural, really
turns out to the injury of the faith.
Hume, as Locke, acknowledges virtually this class of
indistinct ideas, though not definitely and as a class.
Thus, while showing with such extreme acuteness that we
have no idea of a cause, he allows the thing ; asserting
strongly the necessity of attributing the existence of the
world to a cause. When our is contemplation so far
enlarged as to contemplate the first rise of this visible
system, we must adopt with the strongest conviction the
idea of some intelligent
cause. Natural History of
Religion, sect. xv. But we could not lay it down that a
cause was necessary unless we had some idea of one.
What is this then but to say, that we have some idea, but
not a true one, of a cause, an obscure, incipient idea.
The very acuteness with which the philosopher
has proved
that we have no idea of a cause thus turns to the estab
lishment of this kind of truth that I am speaking of,
obscure, incipient, or mysterious
truth. Hume acknow
ledges too the existence of <a vulgar,
inaccurate idea of
power. Enquiry concerning the Human Understand
ing, sect. vii. But what is this vulgar, inaccurate idea,