own being; and, in this matter, come not short of the highest degree of
certainty.




CHAPTER X. OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD.


1. We are capable of knowing certainly that there is a God.

THOUGH God has given us no innate ideas of himself; though he has
stamped no original characters on our minds, wherein we may read his
being; yet having furnished us with those faculties our minds are
endowed with, he hath not left himself without witness: since we have
sense, perception, and reason, and cannot want a clear proof of him, as
long as we carry OURSELVES about us. Nor can we justly complain of our
ignorance in this great point; since he has so plentifully provided us
with the means to discover and know him; so far as is necessary to the
end of our being, and the great concernment of our happiness. But,
though this be the most obvious truth that reason discovers, and though
its evidence be (if I mistake not) equal to mathematical certainty: yet
it requires thought and attention; and the mind must apply itself to a
regular deduction of it from some part of our intuitive knowledge,
or else we shall be as uncertain and ignorant of this as of other
propositions, which are in themselves capable of clear demonstration. To
show, therefore, that we are capable of KNOWING, i.e. BEING CERTAIN that
there is a God, and HOW WE MAY COME BY this certainty, I think we need
go no further than OURSELVES, and that undoubted knowledge we have of
our own existence.