in a general sense, denotes a persuasion or assent of the mind to the truth of a proposition. In this sense, belief has no necessary relation to any particular kind of evidence. Thus we are said to believe our senses, to believe our reason, to believe a witness. But, in its more restricted and technical sense, belief, according to the schoolmen, denotes that kind of assent which is grounded on the authority or testimony of some person or persons asserting or attesting the truth of any matter whatsoever. In this sense, it stands opposed to knowledge and science. We do not say we believe that snow is white, or that ice is cold; but that we see and feel them to be so. That the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, or that all motion is naturally rectilinear, are not said to be things credible, but certain; and the comprehension of such truths is not belief in the ordinary sense in which it is used, but science. But when a thing propounded is neither apparent to the sense nor evident to the understanding; neither certainly to be collected from any obvious or necessary connection with the cause whence it proceeds, nor with the effects which it naturally produces, and yet appears true, not by manifestation, but by an attestation of the truth, moving us to assent, in virtue of testimony given to its reality; this is properly said to be credible, and assent to it is the proper notion of belief or faith.

BETIEVERS, an appellation given, towards the close of the first century, to those Christians who had been admitted into the church by baptism, and instructed in all the mysteries of religion. They were thus called in contradistinction to the catechumens, who had not been baptized, and were consequently debarred from the privileges of believers.