5. Even original revelation cannot be admitted against the clear evidence of reason.
In propositions, then, whose
certainty is built upon the clear perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, attained either by
immediate intuition, as in self-evident propositions, or by evident deductions of reason in demonstrations we need
not the assistance of revelation, as necessary to gain our assent, and introduce them into our minds. Because the
natural ways of knowledge could settle them there, or had done it already; which is the greatest assurance we can
possibly have of anything, unless where God immediately reveals it to us: and there too our assurance can be no
greater than our knowledge is, that it is a revelation from God. But yet nothing, I think, can, under that title, shake
or overrule plain knowledge; or rationally prevail with any man to admit it for true, in a direct contradiction to the
clear evidence of his own understanding. For, since no evidence of our faculties, by which we receive such
revelations, can exceed, if equal, the certainty of our intuitive knowledge, we can never receive for a truth
anything that is directly contrary to our clear and distinct knowledge; v.g. the ideas of one body and one place do
so clearly agree, and the mind has so evident a perception of their agreement, that we can never assent to a
proposition that affirms the same body to be in two distant places at once, however it should pretend to the
authority of a divine revelation: since the evidence, first, that we deceive not ourselves, in ascribing it to God;
secondly, that we understand it right; can never be so great as the evidence of our own intuitive knowledge,
whereby we discern it impossible for the same body to be in two places at once. And therefore no proposition can
be received for divine revelation, or obtain the assent due to all such, if it be contradictory to our clear intuitive
knowledge. Because this would be to subvert the principles and foundations of all knowledge, evidence, and
assent whatsoever: and there would be left no difference between truth and falsehood, no measures of credible and
incredible in the world, if doubtful propositions shall take place before self-evident; and what we certainly know
give way to what we may possibly be mistaken in. In propositions therefore contrary to the clear perception of the
agreement or disagreement of any of our ideas, it will be in vain to urge them as matters of faith. They cannot
move our assent under that or any other title whatsoever. For faith can never convince us of anything that
contradicts our knowledge. Because, though faith be founded on the testimony of God (who cannot lie) revealing
any proposition to us: yet we cannot have an assurance of the truth of its being a divine revelation greater than our
own knowledge. Since the whole strength of the certainty depends upon our knowledge that God revealed it;
which, in this case, where the proposition supposed revealed contradicts our knowledge or reason, will always
have this objection hanging to it, viz., that we cannot tell how to conceive that to come from God, the bountiful
Author of our being, which, if received for true, must overturn all the principles and foundations of knowledge he
has given us; render all our faculties useless; wholly destroy the most excellent part of his workmanship, our
understandings; and put a man in a condition wherein he will have less light, less conduct than the beast that
perisheth. For if the mind of man can never have a clearer (and perhaps not so clear) evidence of anything to be a
divine revelation, as it has of the principles of its own reason, it can never have a ground to quit the clear evidence
of its reason, to give a place to a proposition, whose revelation has not a greater evidence than those principles
have.
