The Living Temple

And (notwithstanding) this so common a consent is yet not without its weight and significancy to our present purpose. If we consider

And (notwithstanding) this so common a consent is yet not without its weight and signicancy to our present purpose. If we consider

How impossible it is to give or imagine any tolerable account of its original, if we do not confess it natural, and refer it to that common ⟨p. 24⟩Author of all nature whom we are enquiring about: (of which so much is said by ^*divers others, that nothing more needs here to be said about it. 5. And at least so much is gained by it to a Temple, that unless some very plain and ungainsayable demonstration be brought against the grounds of it (which will be time enough to consider when we see it pretended to) no opposition, fit to be regarded, can ever be made to it. That is, none at all can possibly be made; but what shall proceed from the most immodest and rash confidence, animated and born up only by a design of being most licentiously wicked, and of making the world become so. Immodest confidence it must be, for it is not a Man, or a Nation, or an Age that such have to oppose, but Mankind; upon which they shall cast, not some lighter reflection, but the vilest and most opprobrious contumely, and scorn that can be imagined. That is the imputation of so egregious folly and dotage, as all this while to have worshipped a shadow as the Author of their being; and a figment for their common parent. And this not the ruder only, and uninquisitive vulgar, but the wisest and most considering persons in all times. Surely less than clear and pregnant demonstration (at least not wild incoherent self-confounding suppositions and surmises, of which more hereafter) will ever be thought sufficient to justify the boldness of an attempt that shall carry this signification with it. And it will be a confidence equally rash as immodest. ⟨p. 25⟩