1817 Oct. 29

Not Paul

Ch III. Doctrine

§ Faith and Works

Mischief of faith

It is by this Paul that the world stands indebted / has been afflicted / by those extravagant notions concerning faith which have not been less mischievous than they are extravagant: that the field of faith is a subject / an exercise / in which merit may be displayed, and that the quantity of merit encreases in exact proportion to the quantity of faith and that this quantity depends / depending / on the degree of exertion employed in the endeavour to attain and possess it no more or less if not altogether at the command of the will / the will is properly employed in the giving encrease to it /, instead of being the result of the unbiased operation of the understanding viz. of the judicial faculty. What The remainder of the text on this folio marked in pencil as a note. is meant by faith is persuasion / belief /: the quantity of the faith is in the intensity of the persuasion, and of the intensity of persuasion if any determinate measure or so much as any precise and determinate idea be to be found it will be found in what is called the doctrine of chances: an event or state of things being given the intensity of the persuasion of its existence will be as the number of chances in favour of its existence to the number of chances in favour of its non existence, according to the estimate made on the subject by him whose persuasion is in question.