proposition, and so not capable of truth or falsehood. To make it
capable of being assented to as true, it must be reduced to some such
proposition as this: "It is the duty of parents to preserve their
children." But what duty is, cannot be understood without a law; nor
a law be known or supposed without a lawmaker, or without reward and
punishment; so that it is impossible that this, or any other, practical
principle should be innate, i.e. be imprinted on the mind as a
duty, without supposing the ideas of God, of law, of obligation, of
punishment, of a life after this, innate: for that punishment follows
not in this life the breach of this rule, and consequently that it has
not the force of a law in countries where the generally allowed practice
runs counter to it, is in itself evident. But these ideas (which must be
all of them innate, if anything as a duty be so) are so far from being
innate, that it is not every studious or thinking man, much less every
one that is born, in whom they are to be found clear and distinct; and
that one of them, which of all others seems most likely to be innate,
is not so, (I mean the idea of God,) I think, in the next chapter, will
appear very evident to any considering man.


13. If men can be ignorant of what is innate, certainty is not described
by innate principles.

From what has been said, I think we may safely conclude that whatever
practical rule is in any place generally and with allowance broken,
cannot be supposed innate; it being impossible that men should, without
shame or fear, confidently and serenely, break a rule which they could
not but evidently know that God had set up, and would certainly punish
the breach of, (which they must, if it were innate,) to a degree to make
it a very ill bargain to the transgressor. Without such a knowledge as