can be
more evident to us than our own existence. I think, I reason, I feel
pleasure and pain: can any of these be more evident to me than my own
existence? If I doubt of all other things, that very doubt makes me
perceive my own existence, and will not suffer me to doubt of that. For
if I know I feel pain, it is evident I have as certain perception of my
own existence, as of the existence of the pain I feel: or if I know
I doubt, I have as certain perception of the existence of the thing
doubting, as of that thought which I CALL DOUBT. Experience then
convinces us, that we have an INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE of our own existence,
and an internal infallible perception that we are. In every act of
sensation, reasoning, or thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of our
own being; and, in this matter, come not short of the highest degree of
certainty.

CHAPTER X. OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD.

1. We are capable of knowing certainly that there is a God.

THOUGH God has given us no innate ideas of himself; though he has
stamped no original characters on our minds, wherein we may read his
being; yet having furnished us with those faculties our minds are
endowed with, he hath not left himself without witness: since we have
sense, perception, and reason, and cannot want a clear proof of him, as
long as we carry OURSELVES about us. Nor can we justly complain of our
ignorance in this great point; since he has so plentifully provided us
with the means to discover and know him; so far as is necessary to the
end of our being, and the great concernment of our happiness. But,
though this be the most obvious truth that reason discovers, and though
its evidence be (if I mistake not) equal to mathematical certainty: yet
it requires thought and attention; and the mind must apply itself to a
regular deduction of it from some part of our intuitive knowledge,
or else we shall be as uncertain and ignorant of this as of other
propositions, which are in themselves capable of clear demonstration. To
show, therefore, that we are capable of KNOWING, i.e. BEING CERTAIN that
there is a God, and HOW WE MAY COME BY this certainty, I think we need
go no further than OURSELVES, and that undoubted knowledge we have of
our own existence.

2. For Man knows that he himself exists.

I think it is beyond question, that man has a clear idea of his own
being; he knows certainly he exists, and that he is something. He that
can doubt whethe