Besides the Romanist there are many other counsellors who, with undoubting confidence, offer to relieve our minds from all anxiety as to the soundness of our belief. Among these parties I may now particularly mention the Sceptic and the Mystic; because their systems, and that of the Romanist, however opposite in other respects, have one essential point of agreement. They all have a decided tendency to supersede our own exertions for the discovery of religious truth—the Sceptic by affirming that religious truth is unimportant; the Mystic by alleging that religious truth is passively received by the mind from divine illumination; and the Romanist by inculcating an unconditional acquiescence in the dictates of infallible authority. {32b} This remarkable coincidence suggests to us, that in respect to our employment of means and opportunities, the way of truth is the very opposite to the way of error; that the right path to saving knowledge does not consist in the _disuse_, but in the _strenuous exertion_ of our intellectual and moral faculties; that the inclination to improve our advantages for attaining spiritual information is designed to try our moral character; and that we have a full security from deadly heresy in the co-operation of Divine Providence, and of Divine grace with our own sincere endeavours after truth. This principle, which pervades the whole of Scripture, {33} is not to be confounded with the fallacies above adverted to. We do not call it infallibility, because we readily admit that rectitude of opinion may exist, in various degrees, among persons, all of whom are in the path of salvation. It differs from infallibility as maintained by Romanists, because we do not consider any individual, nor any number of individuals, to be incapable of error. It differs from the infallibility of the enthusiast, because we lay no claim to exemption from mistake: we insist only that, using faithfully the means at our disposal, we shall escape unpardonable heresy. It differs, thirdly, from the infallibility of the sceptic, because he conceives all doctrines equally excellent, provided their operation in society adapts itself to his confined notions of moral duty. Whereas our method implies that one doctrine differs materially, as to truth and excellence from another, and that we are therefore bound to select the best.