so extravagant as to suppose innate. This I hope to make plain in the
sequel of this Discourse. I allow therefore, a necessity that men should
come to the use of reason before they get the knowledge of those general
truths; but deny that men's coming to the use of reason is the time of
their discovery.

13. By this they are not distinguished from other knowable Truths.

In the mean time it is observable, that this saying that men know and
assent to these maxims "when they come to the use of reason," amounts
in reality of fact to no more but this,--that they are never known nor
taken notice of before the use of reason, but may possibly be assented
to some time after, during a man's life; but when is uncertain. And so
may all other knowable truths, as well as these which therefore have no
advantage nor distinction from other by this note of being known when
we come to the use of reason; nor are thereby proved to be innate, but
quite the contrary.

14. If coming to the Use of Reason were the Time of their Discovery, it
would not prove them innate.

But, secondly, were it true that the precise time of their being known
and assented to were, when men come to the use of reason; neither would
that prove them innate. This way of arguing is as frivolous as the
supposition itself is false. For, by what kind of logic will it appear
that any notion is originally by nature imprinted in the mind in its
first constitution, because it comes first to be observed and assented
to when a faculty of the mind, which has quite a distinct province,
begins to exert itself? And therefore the coming to the use of speech,
if it were supposed the time that these maxims are first assented to,