SECTION I. Metaphysical Proofs of the Existence of God are not
within Everybody's reach.

I cannot open my eyes without admiring the art that shines
throughout all nature; the least cast suffices to make me perceive
the Hand that makes everything.

Men accustomed to meditate upon metaphysical truths, and to trace up
things to their first principles, may know the Deity by its idea;
and I own that is a sure way to arrive at the source of all truth.
But the more direct and short that way is, the more difficult and
unpassable it is for the generality of mankind who depend on their
senses and imagination.

An ideal demonstration is so simple, that through its very
simplicity it escapes those minds that are incapable of operations
purely intellectual. In short, the more perfect is the way to find
the First Being, the fewer men there are that are capable to follow
it.

SECT. II. Moral Proofs of the Existence of God are fitted to every
man's capacity.

But there is a less perfect way, level to the meanest capacity. Men
the least exercised in reasoning, and the most tenacious of the
prejudices of the senses, may yet with one look discover Him who has
drawn Himself in all His works. The wisdom and power He has stamped
upon everything He has made are seen, as it were, in a glass by
those that cannot contemplate Him in His own idea. This is a
sensible and popular philosophy, of which any man free from passion
and prejudice is capable. Humana autem anima rationalis est, quae
mortalibus peccati poena tenebatur, ad hoc diminutionis redacta ut
per conjecturas rerum visibilium ad intelligenda invisibilia
niteretur; that is, "The human soul is still rational, but in such a
manner that, being by the punishment of sin detained in the bonds of
death, it is so far reduced that it can only endeavour to arrive at
the knowledge of things invisible through the visible."

SECT. III. Why so few Persons are attentive to the Proofs Nature
affords of the Existence of God.

If a great number of men of subtle and penetrating wit have not
discovered God with one cast of the eye upon nature, it is not
matter of wonder; for either the passions they have been tossed by
have still rendered them incapable of any fixed reflection, or the
false prejudices that result from passions have, like a thick cloud,
interposed between their eyes and that noble spectacle. A man
deeply concerned in an affair of great importance, that s