Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/163



is in fact pretty nearly Mr. Erskine's argument in his Internal Evidence: an author, concerning whom personally I have no wish to use one harsh word, not doubting that he is better than his own doctrine, and is only the organ, eloquent and ingenious, of unfolding a theory, which it has been his unhappiness to mistake for the Catholic faith revealed in the Gospel. Let us now turn to the Essay in question.

Mr. Erskine begins in the following words:

He then speaks of two processes of reasoning which the mind uses in searching after truth.

Again:

"There is another process of reasoning … by which, instead of ascending from effects to a cause, we descend from a cause to effects. When we are once convinced of the existence of a cause, and are acquainted with its ordinary mode of operation, we are prepared to give a certain degree of credit to a