We are to find a superior, whose
rights, including our duties, are presented to the mind in the very
idea of that Supreme Being, whose sovereign prerogatives are
predicates implied in the subjects, as the essential properties of a
circle are co-assumed in the first assumption of a circle,
consequently underived, unconditional, and as rationally
unsusceptible, so probably prohibitive, of all further question. In
this sense, then, faith is fidelity, fealty, allegiance of the moral
nature to God, in opposition to all usurpation, and in resistance to
all temptation to the placing any other claim above or equal with our
fidelity to God.
The will of God is the last ground and final aim of all our duties,
and to that the whole man is to be harmonised by subordination,
subjugation, or suppression alike in commission and omission. But
the will of God, which is one with the supreme intelligence, is
revealed to man through the conscience. But the conscience, which
consists in an inappellable bearing-witness to the truth and reality
of our reason, may legitimately be construed with the term reason, so
far as the conscience is prescriptive; while as approving or
condemning, it is the consciousness of the subordination or
insubordination, the harmony or discord, of the personal will of man
to and with the representative of the will of God.
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