and deserves the first place among all practical principles. But yet it can by no means be thought innate, unless the ideas of God and worship are innate. That the idea the term worship stands for is not in the understanding of children, and a character stamped on the mind in its first original, I think, will be easily granted by any one that considers how few there be, among grown men, who have a clear and distinct notion of it. And, I suppose, there cannot be any thing more ridiculous than to say that children have this practical principle innate, "that God is to be worshipped:" and yet that they know not what that worship of God is, which is their duty. But to pass by this:

SECT. 8. Idea of God not innate. If any idea can be imagined innate, the idea of God may, of all others, for many reasons, be thought so; since it is hard to conceive how there should be innate moral principles without an innate idea of a Deity: without a notion of a lawmaker, it is impossible to have a notion of a law, and an obligation to observe it. Besides the atheists taken notice of among the ancients, and left branded upon the records of history, hath not navigation discovered, in these later ages, whole nations, at the bay of Soldania(a), in Brazil (b), in Boranday(c), and in the Caribee islands, &c. among whom there was to be found no notion of a God, no religion? Nicholaus del Techo in literis ex Paraquaria de Caaiguarum conversione, has these words(d): "Reperi eam gentem nullum nomen habere, quod Deum et hominis animam significet, nulla sacra habet, nulla idola." These are instances of nations where uncultivated nature has been left to itself, without the help of letters and discipline, and the improvement of arts and sciences. But there are others to be found, who have enjoyed these in a very great measure, who yet, for want of a due application of their thoughts this way, want the idea and knowledge of God. It will, I doubt not, be a surprise to others, as it was to me, to find the Siamites of this number. But for this let them consult the king of France's late envoy thither(e), who gives no better account of the Chinese themselves(f). And if we will not believe La Loubere, the missionaries of China, even the Jesuits themselves, the great encomiasts of the Chinese, do all, to a man, agree, and will convince us that the sect of the literati, or learned, keeping to the old religion of China, and the ruling party there, are all of them atheists. [Vid. Navarette, in the collection of voyages, vol. i. and Historia cultus Sinensium.] And perhaps if we should, with attention, mind the lives and discourse of people not so far off, we should have too much reason to fear, that many in more civilized countries have no very strong and clear impressions of a Deity upon their minds; and that the complaints of atheism, made from the pulpit, are not without reason. And though only some profligate wretches own it too barefacedly now; yet perhaps we should hear more than we do of it from others, did not the fear of the magistrate's sword, or their neighbour's censure, tie up people's tongues; which, were the apprehensions of punishment or shame taken away, would as openly proclaim their atheism, as their lives do (g).

(a) Roe apud Thevenot, p. 2.

c) Martiniere 2.

322

(b) Jo. de Lery, c. 16.

Terry and 17

545

23

Ovington 488.

(d) Relatio triplex de rebus Indicis Caaiguarum 3. (e) La Loubere du Royaume du Siam, t. 1, c. 9, sect. 15, and c. 20, sect. 22, and c. 22, sect. 6.

(f) Ib. t. 1. c. 20, sect. 4, and c. 23.

(g) On this reasoning of the author against innate ideas, great blame hath been laid; because it seems to invalidate an argument commonly used to prove the being of a God, viz. universal consent: to which our author answers, I think that the universal consent of mankind, as to the being of a God, amounts to thus much, that the vastly greater majority of mankind have, in all ages of the world,

* In his third letter to the Bishop of Worcester.

SECT. 9. But had all mankind, every where, a notion of a God, (whereof yet history tells us the contrary) it would not from thence follow that the idea of him was innate. For though no nation were to be found without a name, and some few dark notions of him, yet that would not prove them to be natural impressions on the mind, any more than the names of fire, or the sun, heat, or number, do prove the ideas they stand for to be innate, because the names of those things, and the ideas of them, are so universally received and known among mankind. Nor, on the contrary, is the want of such a name, or the absence of such a notion, out of men's minds, any argument against the being of a God; any more than it would be a proof that there was no loadstone in the world, because a great part of mankind had neither a notion of any such thing, nor a name for it; or by any show of argument to prove, that there are no distinct and various species of angels or intelligent beings above us, because we have no ideas of such distinct species, or names for them: for men being furnished with words, by the common language of their own countries, can scarce avoid having some kind of ideas of those things, whose names those they converse with have occasion frequently to mention to them. And if they carry with it the notion of excellency, greatness, or something extraordinary; if apprehension and concernment accompany it; if the fear of absolute and irresistible power set it on upon the mind, the idea is likely to sink the deeper, and spread the farther: especially if it be such an idea as is agreeable to the common light of reason, and naturally deducible from every part of our knowledge, as that of a God is. For the visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of the creation, that a rational creature, who will but seriously reflect on them, cannot miss the discovery of a Deity. And the influence that the discovery of such a being must necessarily have on the minds of all, that have but once heard of it, is so great, and carries such a weight of thought and communication with it, that it seems strange to me that a whole nation of men should be any

actually believed a God; that the majority of the remaining part have not actually disbelieved it; and consequently those who have actually opposed the belief of a God have truly been very few. So that comparing those that have actually disbelieved, with those who have actually believed a God, their number is so inconsiderable, that in respect of this incomparably greater majority, of those who have owned the belief of a God, it may be said to be the universal consent of mankind.

This is all the universal consent which truth or matter of fact will allow; and therefore all that can be made use of to prove a God. But if any one would extend it farther, and speak deceitfully for God; if this universality should be urged in a strict sense, not for much the majority, but for a general consent of every one, even to a man, in all ages and countries, this would make it either no argument, or a perfectly useless and unnecessary one. For if any one deny a God, such an universality of consent is destroyed; and if nobody does deny a God, what need of arguments to convince atheists?

I would crave leave to ask you lordship, were there ever in the world any atheists or no? If there were not, what need is there of raising a question about the being of a God, when nobody questions it? What need of provisional arguments against a fault, from which mankind are so wholly free, and which by an universal consent, they may be presumed to be secure from? If you say (as I doubt not but you will) that there have been atheists in the world, then your lordship's universal consent reduces itself to only a great majority; and then make that majority as great as you will, what I have said in the place quoted by your lordship leaves it in its full force; and I have not said one word that does in the least invalidate this argument for a God. The argument I was upon there, was to show, that the idea of God was not innate; and to my purpose it was sufficient, if there were but a less number found in the world, who had no idea of God, than your lordship will allow there have been of professed atheists; for

where found so brutish as to want the notion of a God, than that they should be without any notion of numbers or fire.

SECT. 10. The name of God being once mentioned in any part of the world, to express a superior, powerful, wise, invisible being, the suitableness of such a notion to the principles of common reason, and the interest men will always have to mention it often, must necessarily spread it far and wide, and continue it down to all generations; though yet the general reception of this name, and some imperfect and unsteady notions conveyed thereby to the unthinking part of mankind, prove not the idea to be innate; but only that they who made the discovery had made a right use of their reason, thought maturely of the causes of things, and traced them to their original; from whom other less considering people, having once received so important a notion, it could not easily be lost again.

SECT. 11. This is all could be inferred from the notion of a God, were it to be found universally in all the tribes of mankind, and generally acknowledged by men grown to maturity in all countries. For the generality of the acknowledging of a God, as I imagine, is extended no farther than that; which if it be sufficient to prove the idea of God innate, will as well prove the idea of fire innate; since, I think, it may be truly said, that there is not a person in the world, who has a notion of a God, who has not also the idea of fire. I doubt not, but if a colony of young children should be placed in an island where no fire was, they would certainly neither have any notion of such a thing, nor name for it; how generally soever it were received and known in all the world besides: and perhaps too their apprehensions would be as far removed from any name or notion of a God, till some one among them had employed his thoughts to inquire into the constitution and causes of things, which would easily lead him to the notion of a God; which having once taught to others, rea. son, and the natural propensity of their own thoughts, would afterward propagate and continue among them.

whatsoever is innate must be universal in the strictest sense. One exception is a sufficient proof against it. So that all that I said, and which was quite to another purpose, did not at all tend, nor can be made use of, to invalidate the argument for a Deity, grounded on such an universal consent, as your lordship, and all that build on it, must own; which is only a very disproportionate majority; such an universal consent my argument there neither affirms nor requires to be less than you will be pleased to allow it. Your lordship therefore might, without any prejudice to those declarations of good-will and favour you have for the author of the "Essay of Human Understanding," have spared the mentioning his quoting authors that are in print, for matters of fact to quite another purpose, "as going about to invalidate the argument for a Deity, from the universal consent of mankind; since he leaves that universal consent as entire and as large as you yourself do, or can own, or suppose it. But here I have no reason to be sorry that your lordship has given me this occasion for the vindication of this passage of my book; if there should be any one besides your lordship, who should so far mistake it, as to think it in the least invalidates the argument for a God, from the universal consent of mankind.

But because you question the credibility of those authors I have quoted, which you say were very ill-chosen, I will crave leave to say, that he whom I relied on for his testimony concerning the Hottentots of Soldania, was no less a man than an ambassador from the king of England to the Great Mogul; of whose relation, Monsieur Thevenot, no ill judge in the case, had so great an esteem, that he was at the pains to translate into French and publish it in his (which is counted no injudicious) Collection of Travels. But to intercede with your lordship for a little more favourable allowance of credit to Sir Thomas Roe's relation; Coore, an inhabitant of the country, who could speak English, assured Mr Terry, that they of Soldania had no God. But if he, too, have the

SECT. 12. Suitable to God's goodness, that all men should have an idea of him, therefore naturally imprinted by him, answered.-Indeed it is urged, that it is suitable to the goodness of God to imprint upon the minds of men characters and notions of himself, and not to leave them in the dark and doubt in so grand a concernment; and also by that means to secure to himself the homage and veneration due from so intelligent a creature as man; and therefore he has done it.

This argument, if it be of any force, will prove much more than those who use it in this case expect from it. For if we may conclude that God hath done for men all that men shall judge is best for them, because it is suitable to his goodness so to do; it will prove not only that God has imprinted on the minds of men an idea of himself, but that he hath plainly stamped there, in fair characters, all that men ought to know or believe of him, all that they ought to do in obedience to his will; and that he hath given them a will and affections conformable to it. This, no doubt, every one will think better for men, than that they should in the dark grope after knowledge, as St Paul tells us all nations did after God, Acts xvii. 27, than that their wills should clash with their understandings, and their appetites cross their duty. The Romanists say, it is best for men, and so suitable to the goodness of God, that there should be an infallible judge of controversies on earth; and therefore there is one. And I, by the same reason say, it is better for men that every man himself should be infallible. I leave them to consider, whether by the force of this argument they shall think that every man is so. I think it a very good argument to say, the infinitely wise God hath made it so; and therefore it is best. But it

ill luck to find no credit with you, I hope you will be a little more favourable to a divine of the church of England, now living, and admit of his testimony in confirmation of Sir Thomas Roe's. This worthy gentleman, in the relation of his voyage to Surat, printed but two years since, speaking of the same people, has these words: "They are sunk even below idolatry, are destitute of both priest and temple, and, saving a little show of rejoicing, which is made at the full and new moon, have lost all kind of religious devotion. Nature has so richly provided for their convenience in this life, that they have drowned all sense of the God of it, and are grown quite careless of the next."

But to provide against the clearest evidence of atheism in these people, you say, "that the account given of them makes them not fit to be a standard for the sense of mankind." This, I think, may pass for nothing, till somebody be found that makes them to be a standard for the sense of mankind. All the use I made of them was to show, that there were men in the world that had no innate idea of a God. But to keep something like an argument going, (for what will not that do?) you go near denying those Cafers to be men. What else do these words signify? "A people so strangely berest of common sense, that they can hardly be reckoned among mankind, as appears by the best accounts of the Cafers of Soldania, &c." I hope, if any of them were called Peter, James, or John, it would be past scruple that they were men: however, Courwee, Wewena, and Cowsheda, and those others who had names, that had no places in your nomenclator, would hardly pass muster with your lordship.

My Lord, I should not mention this, but that what you yourself say here, may be a motive to you to consider, that what you have laid such stress on concerning the general nature of man, as a real being, and the subject of properties, amounts to nothing for the distinguishing of species; since you yourself own, that there may be individuals, wherein there is a common nature with a particular subsistence proper to each of them; whereby you are so little able to know of which of the ranks or sorts they are, into which you say God has ordered beings, and which he hath distinguished, by essential properties, that you are in doubt whether they ought to be reckoned among mankind or no.

* Mr Ovington, p. 489.

seems to me a little too much confidence of our own wisdom to say, "I think it best, and therefore God hath made it so;" and, in the matter in hand, it will be in vain to argue from such a topic that God hath done so, when certain experience shows us that he hath not. But the goodness of God hath not been wanting to men without such original impressions of knowledge, or ideas stamped on the mind: since he hath furnished man with those faculties, which will serve for the sufficient discovery of all things requisite to the end of such a being. And I doubt not but to show that a man, by the right use of his natural abilities, may, without any innate principles, attain a knowledge of a God, and other things that concern him. God having endued man with those faculties of knowing which he hath, was no more obliged by his goodness to plant those innate notions in his mind, than that, having given him reason, hands, and materials, he should build him bridges or houses; which some people in the world, however of good parts, do either totally want, or are but ill provided of, as well as others are wholly without ideas of God, and principles of morality; or at least have but very ill ones. The reason in both cases being, that they never employed their parts, faculties, and powers industriously that way, but contented themselves with the opinions, fashions, and things of their country, as they found them, without looking any farther. Had you or I been born at the bay of Soldania, possibly our thoughts and notions had not exceeded those brutish ones of the Hottentots that inhabit there: and had the Virginia king Apochancana been educated in England, he had been, perhaps, as knowing a divine, and as good a mathematician, as any in it. The difference between him and a more improved Englishman lying barely in this, that the exercise of his faculties was bounded within the ways, modes, and notions of his own country, and never directed to any other or farther inquiries; and if he had not any idea of a God, it was only because he pursued not those thoughts that would have led him to it.

SECT. 13. Ideas of God various in different men. I grant that if there were any idea to be found imprinted on the minds of men, we have reason to expect it should be the notion of his Maker, as a mark God set on his own workmanship, to mind man of his dependence and duty; and that herein should appear the first instances of human knowledge. But how late is it before any such notion is discoverable in children? And when we find it there, how much more does it resemble the opinion and notion of the teacher, than represent the true God? He that shall observe in children the progress whereby their minds attain the knowledge they have, will think that the objects they do first and most familiarly converse with, are those that make the first impressions on their understandings; nor will he find the least footsteps of any other. It is easy to take notice how their thoughts enlarge themselves, only as they come to be acquainted with a greater variety of sensible objects, to retain the ideas of them in their memories; and to get the skill to compound and enlarge them, and several ways put them together. How by these means they come to frame in their minds an idea men have of a Deity I shall hereafter show.

SECT. 14. Can it be thought that the ideas men have of God are the characters and marks of himself, engraven on their minds by his own finger, when we see that in the same country, under one and the same name, men have far different, nay, often contrary and inconsistent ideas and conceptions of him? Their agreeing in a name or sound, will scarce prove an innate notion of him.

SECT. 15. What true or tolerable notion of a Deity could they have, who acknowledged and worshipped hundreds? Every deity that they owned above one was an infallible evidence of their ignorance of him, and a proof that they had no true notion of God, where unity, infinity, and eternity, were excluded. To which, if we add their gross conceptions of corporeity, expressed in their images and representations of their deities;