fore it can bring it to the test of logic. If it is the
former, it is above a private judgment, popularly so-called; if the
latter, it is not yet so much as one.

A second class of conversions on private judgment consists of those
which take place upon the sight or the strong testimony of miracles.
Such was the instance of Rahab, of Naaman, if he may be called a
convert, and of Nebuchadnezzar; of the blind man in John ix, of St.
Paul, of Cornelius, of Sergius Paulus, and many others. Here again the
act of judgment is of a very peculiar character. It is not exactly an
unconscious act, but yet it is hardly an act of judgment. Our belief in
external sensible facts cannot properly be called an act of private
judgment; yet since Protestants, we suppose, would say that the blind
man or Sergius Paulus were converted on private judgment, let it even so
be called, though it is of a very particular kind. Again, conviction
after a miracle also implies the latent belief that such acts are signs
of the Divine Presence, a belief which may be as generally recognized
and maintained, and is as little a peculiar or private feeling as the
impression on the senses of the miracle itself. And this leads to the
mention of a further instance of the sort of private judgments to which
men are invited in Scripture, viz., the exercise of the moral sense. Our
Creator has stamped certain great truths upon our minds, and there they
remain in spite of the fall. St. Paul appeals to one of these at Lystra,
calling on the worshippers of idols to turn from these vanities unto the
Living God; and at Athens, "not to think that the Godhead is like unto
gold, or silver, or stone graven by art and man's device," but to
worship "God who made the world and all things therein." In the same
tone he reminds the Thessalonians of their having "turned to God from
idols to serve the Living and True God." In like manner, doubtless,
other great principles also of religion and morals are rooted in the
minds so deeply, that their denial by any religion would be a
justification of our quitting or rejecting it. If a pagan found his
ecclesiastical polity essentially founded on lying and cheating, or his
ritual essentially impure, or his moral code essentially unjust or
cruel, we conceive this would be a sufficient reason for his renouncing
it for one which was free from these hateful characteristics. Such again
is the kind of private judgment exercised, when maxims of principl