8. Idea of God not innate.
If any idea can be imagined innate, the idea of God may, of all others, for many
reasons, be thought so; since it is hard to conceive how there should be innate moral principles, without an innate
idea of a Deity. Without a notion of a law-maker, it is impossible to have a notion of a law, and an obligation to
observe it. Besides the atheists taken notice of amongst the ancients, and left branded upon the records of history,
hath not navigation discovered, in these later ages, whole nations, at the bay of Soldania, in Brazil, [in Boranday,]
and in the Caribbee islands, etc., amongst whom there was to be found no notion of a God, no religion? Nicholaus
del Techo, in Literis ex Paraquaria, de Caiguarum Conversione, has these words: Reperi eam gentem nullum
nomen habere quod Deum, et hominis animam significet; nulla sacra habet, nulla idola. These are instances of
nations where uncultivated nature has been left to itself, without the help of letters and discipline, and the
improvements of arts and sciences. But there are others to be found who have enjoyed these in a very great
measure, who yet, for want of a due application of their thoughts this way, want the idea and knowledge of God.
It will, I doubt not, be a surprise to others, as it was to me, to find the Siamites of this number. But for this, let
them consult the King of France's late envoy thither, who gives no better account of the Chinese themselves. And
if we will not believe La Loubere, the missionaries of China, even the Jesuits themselves, the great encomiasts of
the Chinese, do all to a man agree, and will convince us, that the sect of the literari, or learned, keeping to the old
religion of China, and the ruling party there, are all of them atheists. Vid. Navarette, in the Collection of Voyages,
vol. i., and Historia Cultus Sinensium. And perhaps, if we should with attention mind the lives and discourses of
people not so far off, we should have too much reason to fear, that many, in more civilized countries, have no
very strong and clear impressions of a Deity upon their minds, and that the complaints of atheism made from the
pulpit are not without reason. And though only some profligate wretches own it too barefacedly now; yet perhaps
we should hear more than we do of it from others, did not the fear of the magistrate's sword, or their neighbour's
censure, tie up people's tongues; which, were the apprehensions of punishment or shame taken away, would as
openly proclaim their atheism as their lives do.
