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.
