t; but then they
will urge that we should not make the path of truth too narrow; that it
is a royal and a broad highway by which we travel heavenward, whereas it
has been the one object of theologians, in every age, to encroach upon
it, till at length it has become scarcely broad enough for two to walk
abreast in. And moreover, it will be objected, that over-exactness was
the very fault of the fourth and fifth centuries in particular, which
refined upon the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and our Lord's
Incarnation, till the way of life became like that razor's edge, which
is said in the Koran to be drawn high over the place of punishment, and
must be traversed by every one at the end of the world.

Now I cannot possibly deny, however disadvantageous it may be to their
reputation, that the Fathers do represent the way of faith as narrow,
nay, even as being the more excellent and the more royal for that very
narrowness. Such is orthodoxy certainly; but here it is obvious to ask
whether this very characteristic of it may not possibly be rather an
argument for, than against, its divine origin. Certain it is, that such
nicety, as it is called, is not unknown to other religious
dispensations, creeds, and covenants, besides that which the primitive
Church identified with Christianity. Nor is it a paradox to maintain
that the whole system of religion, natural as well as revealed, is full
of similar appointments. As to the subject of ethics, even a heathen
philosopher tells us, that virtue consists in a mean--that is, in a
point between indefinitely-extending extremes; "men being in one way
good, and many ways bad." The same principle, again, is seen in the
revealed system of spiritual communications; the grant of grace and
privilege depending on positive ordinances, simple and definite--on the
use of a little water, the utterance of a few words, the imposition of
hands, and the like; which, it will perhaps be granted, are really
essential to the conveyance of spiritual blessings, yet are confessedly
as formal and technical as any creed can be represented to be. In a
word, such technicality is involved in the very idea of a _means_, which
may even be defined to be a something appointed, at God's inscrutable
pleasure, as the necessary condition of something else; and the simple
question before us is, merely the _matter of fact_, viz., whether any
doctrine _is_ set forth by Revelation as necessary to be believed _in
order_ to salva