his consciousness. He tries to believe. He earnestly prays for faith ; but he cannot exercise it. It is true, as concerns the sin- ner in relation to the gospel, that this inability to believe arises from the state of his mind. But this state of the mind lies below the will. It cannot be determined or changed by the exercise of any voluntary power. On these grounds the definition of faith, whether as generic or religious, as a voluntary assent to truth, must be considered unsatisfactory.
Definitions founded on the Object of Faith.
The preceding definitions are all founded on the assumed sub- jective nature of faith. The next definition is of a different kind. It is founded on the nature of its object. Faith is said to be the persuasion of the truth of things not seen. This is a very old and familiar definition. " Quid est fides," asks Augustine,1 u nisi cre- dere quod non vides." And Lombard 2 says, " Fides est virtus qua creduntur quae non videntur." Hence faith is said to be swallowed up in vision ; and the one is contrasted with the other ; as when the Apostle says, " We walk by faith, not by sight." And in Hebrews, eleventh chapter, all the objects of faith under the aspect in which it is considered in that chapter, are included under the categories of to. l\int,6^€.va and ra ov pXeno/jLeva, " things hoped for, and things not seen." The latter includes the former. " We hope," says the Apostle, " for that we see not." (Romans viii. 25.) The word sight, in this connection, may be taken in three senses. First, in its literal sense. We are not said to be- lieve what we see with our eyes. What we see we know to be true. We believe that the planet Saturn is surrounded by a belt, and that Jupiter has four satellites, on the unanimous testimony of astronomers. But if we look through a telescope and see the belt of the one and the satellites of the other, our faith passes into knowledge. We believe there is such a city as Rome, and that it contains the Colosseum,, Trajan's Arch, and other monu- ments of antiquity. If we visit that city and see these things for ourselves, our faith becomes knowledge. The conviction is no stronger in the one case than in the other. We are just as sure there is such a city before having seen it, as though we had been there a hundred times. But the conviction is of a different kind. Secondly, the mind is said to see when it perceives an object of
1 In Joannis Emngelium Tractatus, XL. 9 ; Works, edit. Benedictines, Paris, 1837, vol. iii. p. 2088 b. * Liber Sententiarum, m. xxiii. B., edit. 1472(?).
54 PART III. Ch. XVI. -FAITH.
thought to be true in its own light, or by its own radiance. This mental vision may be either immediate or mediate — either intui- tive or through a process of proof. A child may believe that the angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles, on the authority of his teacher. When he understands the demon- stration of that proposition, his faith becomes knowledge. He sees it to be true. The objects of sense-perception, the objects of intuition, and what we recognize as true on a process of proof, are not, according to this definition of the term, objects of faith. We know what we see to be true ; we believe when we recognize as true what we do not see. It is true that the same thing may be an object of faith and an object of knowledge, but not at the same time. We may recognize as true the being of God, or the immortality of the soul, because the propositions, "God is," " the soul is immortal," are susceptible of proof. The arguments in support of those propositions may completely satisfy our minds. But they are truths of revelation to be believed on the authority of God. These states of mind which we call knowledge and faith, are not identical, neither are they strictly coexisting. The effect produced by the demonstration is one thing. The effect produced by the testimony of God's word, is another thing. Both include a persuasion of the truth. But that persuasion is in its nature different in the one case from what it is in the other, as it rests on different grounds. When the arguments are before the mind, the conviction which they produce is knowledge. When the tes- timony of God is before the mind, the conviction which it pro- duces is faith. On this subject Thomas Aquinas says,1 " Neces- sarium est homini accipere per modum fidei non solum ea, quae sunt supra rationem : sed etiam ea, quss per rationem cognosci possunt. Et hoc propter tria, Primo quidem, ut citius homo ad
veritatis divinae cognitionem perveniat Secundo, ut cog-
nitio Dei sit communior. Multi enim in studio scientise proficere
non possunt Tertio modo propter certitudinem. Ratio
enim humana in rebus divinis est multum deficient"
Thirdly, under the " things not seen," some would include all things not present to the mind. A distinction is made between presentative and representative knowledge. In the former the object is present at the time ; we perceive it, we are conscious of it. In representative knowledge there is an object now present, representing an absent object. Thus we have the conception of a person or thing. That conception is present, but the thing
« Summa, n. ii. qu8e8t. ii. art. 4, edit. Cologne, 1630, pp. 6 b, 7 a, of third set.