CHAPTER III.
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD NATURALLY IMPLANTED IN THE HUMAN MIND.
Sections.
1. The knowledge of God being manifested to all makes the reprobate without excuse. Universal belief and acknowledgment of the existence of God.
2. Objection—that religion and the belief of a Deity are the inventions of crafty politicians. Refutation of the objection. This universal belief confirmed by the examples of wicked men and Atheists.
3. Confirmed also by the vain endeavours of the wicked to banish all fear of God from their minds. Conclusion, that the knowledge of God is naturally implanted in the human mind.
1. That there exists in the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead, the memory of which he constantly renews and occasionally enlarges, that all to a man being aware that there is a God, and that he is their Maker, may be condemned by their own conscience when they neither worship him nor consecrate their lives to his service. Certainly, if there is any quarter where it may be supposed that God is unknown, the most likely for such an instance to exist is among the dullest tribes farthest removed from civilization. But, as a heathen tells us,[1] there is no nation so barbarous, no race so brutish, as not to be imbued with the conviction that there is a God. Even those who, in
- ↑ "Intelligi necesse est deos, eorum innitas eorum vel potius innatas cognitiones habemus. Quæ nobis natura informationem deorum ipsorum dedit, eadem insculpsit in mentibus ut eos æternos et beatos haberemus."—Cic. de Nat. Deor. lib. i. c. 17. "Itaque inter omnes omnium gen tium summa constat; omnibus enim innatum est, et in animo quasi insculptum esse deos." Lib. ii. c. 4. See also Lact. Inst. Div. lib. iii. c. 10.
