A useful instance to illustrate the importance of distinct, and the mischief of equivocal or multivocal, terms. Had Hooker said that the fundamental truths of religion, though perhaps even more certain, are less evident than the facts of sense, there could have been no misunderstanding. Thus the demonstrations of algebra possess equal certainty with those of geometry, but cannot lay claim to the same evidence. Certainty is positive, evidence relative; the former, strictly taken, insusceptible of more or less, the latter capable of existing in many different degrees. Writing a year or more after the preceding note, I am sorry to say that Hooker's reasoning on this point seems to me sophistical throughout. That a man must see what he sees is no persuasion at all, nor bears the remotest analogy to any judgment of the mind. The question is, whether men have a clearer conception and a more stedfast conviction of the objective reality to which the image moving their eye appertains, than of the objective reality of the things and states spiritually discovered by faith. And this Travers had a right to question wherever a saving faith existed. August, 1826. SERMON IV. A REMEDY AGAINST SORROW AND FEAR. Ib. p. 801. In spirit I am with you to the world's end. O how grateful should I be to be made intuitive of the truth intended in the words--'In spirit I am with you!' Ib. p. 808. Touching the latter affection of fear, which respecteth evils to come, as the other which we have spoken of doth present evils; first, in the nature thereof it is plain that we are not every future evil afraid. Perceive we not how they, whose tenderness shrinketh at the least rase of a needle's point, do kiss the sword that pierceth their souls quite thorow? In this and in sundry similar passages of this venerable writer there is [Greek: h_os emoige dokei], a very plausible, but even therefore the more dangerous, sophism; but the due detection and exposure of which would exceed the scanty space of a marginal comment. Briefly, what does Hooker comprehend in the term 'pain?' Whatsoever the soul finds adverse to her well being, or incompatible with her free action? In this sense Hooker's position is a mere truism. But if pain be applied exclusively to the soul finding itself as life, then it is an error. Ib. p. 811. Fear then in itself being mere nature cannot in itself be sin, which sin is not nature, but therefore an accessary deprivation. I suspect a misprint, and that it should be depravation'. But if not nature, then it must be a super-induced and incidental depravation of nature. The principal, namely fear, is nature; but the sin, that is, that it is a sinful fear, is but an accessary. [Footnote 1: The references are to Mr. Keble's edition (1836.)--Ed.] [Footnote 2: But see Mr. Keble's statement (Pref. xxix.), and the argument founded on discoveries and collation of MSS. since the note in the text was written.--Ed.]