aul 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 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 knowledge
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 further. 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 bar