Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

3. Natural and innate; which pleads strongly for the perpetuity of it. Tis natural tho some think it not a Principle writ in the heart of man;^* tis so natural that every man is born with a restless instinct to be of some kind of Religion or other, which implies some object of Religion. The impression of a Deity is as common as reason, and of the same age with reason.^* Tis a Relic of knowledge after the fall of Adam, like fire under ashes, which sparkles as soon as ever the heap of ashes is opened. A notion sealed up in the Soul of every man;^* else how could those people who were unknown to one another, separate by Seas and Mounts, differing in various customs and manner of living, had no mutual intelligence one with another, light upon this as a common Sentiment, if they had not been guided by one uniform reason in all their minds, by one nature common to them all: though their Climates be different, their tempers and constitutions various, their imaginations in somethings as distant from one another as Heaven is from Earth, the Ceremonies of their Religion not all of the same kind; Yet wherever you find human nature, you find this settled persuasion. So that the Notion of a God seems to be twisted with the nature of man, and is the first natural branch of Common reason, or upon either the first inspection of a man into himself and his own state and constitution, or upon the first sight of any external visible object. Nature within man, and nature without man agree upon the first meeting together to form this Sentiment, that there is a God. Tis as natural as any thing we call a Common Principle. One thing which is called a Common Principle and natural is, that the whole is greater than the parts. If this be not born with us, yet the exercise of reason essential to man settles it as a certain Maxim; upon the dividing any thing into several parts, he finds every part less than when they were altogether. By the same exercise of reason, we cannot cast our eyes upon any thing in the world, or exercise our understandings upon our selves, but we must presently imagine, there was some cause of those things, some cause of my self and my own being; so that this Truth is as natural to man as any thing he can call most natural or a Common Principle.