3. Objection. "What shall become of those who want proofs?" Answered.
What shall we say, then? Are the
greatest part of mankind, by the necessity of their condition, subjected to unavoidable ignorance in those things
which are of greatest importance to them? (for of those it is obvious to inquire). Have the bulk of mankind no
other guide but accident and blind chance to conduct them to their happiness or misery? Are the current opinions,
and licensed guides of every country sufficient evidence and security to every man to venture his great
concernments on; nay, his everlasting happiness or misery? Or can those be the certain and infallible oracles and
standards of truth, which teach one thing in Christendom and another in Turkey? Or shall a poor countryman be
eternally happy, for having the chance to be born in Italy; or a day-labourer be unavoidably lost, because he had
the ill-luck to be born in England? How ready some men may be to say some of these things, I will not here
examine: but this I am sure, that men must allow one or other of these to be true, (let them choose which they
please,) or else grant that God has furnished men with faculties sufficient to direct them in the way they should
take, if they will but seriously employ them that way, when their ordinary vocations allow them the leisure. No
man is so wholly taken up with the attendance on the means of living, as to have no spare time at all to think of
his soul, and inform himself in matters of religion. Were men as intent upon this as they are on things of lower
concernment, there are none so enslaved to the necessities of life who might not find many vacancies that might
be husbanded to this advantage of their knowledge.
