Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

'Tis strange if there were any reason on their side, that in so long a space of time, as hath run out from the Creation of the World, there could not be engaged a considerable number to frame a Society for the profession of it. It hath died with the Person that started it, and vanished as soon as it appeared.

'Tis strange if there were any reason on their side, that in so long a space of time, as hath run out from the Creation of the World, there could not be engaged a considerable number to frame a Society for the profession of it. It hath died with the Person that started it, and vanish'd as soon as it appeared.

To conclude this, is it not folly for any man to deny or doubt of the being of a God, to dissent from all mankind, and stand in contradiction to humane Nature? What is the general dictate of Nature is a certain Truth. 'Tis impossible, that Nature can naturally and universally lie. And therefore those that ascribe all to Nature, and set it in the Place of God, contradict themselves, if they give not credit to it in that which it universally affirms.^‖ A general consent of all Nations is to be esteemed as a Law of Nature. Nature cannot plant in the minds of all men an assent to a falsity, for then the Laws of Nature would be destructive to the reason and minds of men. How is it possible, that a falsity should be a persuasion spread through all Nations, engraven upon the minds of all men, men of the most towering, and men of the most creeping understanding; that they should consent to it in all places, and in those places, where the Nations have not had any known commerce with the rest of the known World? A Consent not settled by any Law of Man to constrain People to a belief of it: And indeed 'tis impossible, that any Law of man can constrain the Belief of the mind. Would not he deservedly be accounted a fool, that should deny that to be gold, which hath been tried and examined by a great number of knowing Goldsmiths, and hath past the test of all their touch-stones? what excess of folly would it be for him to deny it to be true gold, if it had been tried by all that had skill in that metal in all Nations in the World?