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.
9. The name of God not universal or obscure in meaning. But had
all mankind everywhere a notion of a God, (whereof yet history tells
us the contrary,) it would not from thence follow, that the idea of
him was innate. For, though no nation were to be found without a name,
and some few dark notions of him, yet that would not prove them to
be natural impressions on the mind; no more than the names of fire, or
the sun, heat, or number, do prove the ideas they stand for to be
innate; because the names of those things, and the ideas of them,
are so universally received and known amongst mankind.
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