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.
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