s, I might assent to the truth
of that proposition, upon the credit of the tradition, that it was
revealed: but that would never amount to so great a certainty as the
knowledge of it, upon the comparing and measuring my own ideas of two
right angles, and the three angles of a triangle. The like holds in
matter of fact knowable by our senses; v.g. the history of the deluge is
conveyed to us by writings which had their original from revelation: and
yet nobody, I think, will say he has as certain and clear a knowledge of
the flood as Noah, that saw it; or that he himself would have had, had
he then been alive and seen it. For he has no greater an assurance than
that of his senses, that it is writ in the book supposed writ by Moses
inspired: but he has not so great an assurance that Moses wrote that
book as if he had seen Moses write it. So that the assurance of its
being a revelation is less still than the assurance of his senses.

5. Even Original Revelation cannot be admitted against the clear Evidence
of Reason.

In propositions, then, whose certainty is built upon the clear
perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, attained
either by immediate intuition, as in self-evident propositions, or
by evident deductions of reason in demonstrations we need not the
assistance of revelation, as necessary to gain our assent, and introduce
them into our minds. Because the natural ways of knowledge could settle
them there, or had done it already; which is the greatest assurance we
can possibly have of anything, unless where God immediately reveals it
to us: and there too our assurance can be no greater than our knowledge
is, that it IS a revelation from God. But yet nothing, I think, can,
under that title, shake or overrule plain knowledge; or rationally
prevail with any man to admit it for true, in a direct contradiction to
the clear evidence of his own understanding. For, since no evidence of
our faculties, by which we receive such revelations, can exceed, if
equal, the certainty of our intuitive knowledge, we can never receive
for a truth anything that is directly contrary to our clear and distinct
knowledge; v.g. the ideas of one body and one place do so clearly agree,
and the mind has so evident a perception of their agreement, that we can
never assent to a proposition that affirms the same body to be in two
distant places at once, however it should pretend to the authority of
a divine revelation: since the ev