For our simple ideas, then, which are the
foundation, and sole matter of all our notions and knowledge, we
must depend wholly on our reason; I mean our natural faculties; and
can by no means receive them, or any of them, from traditional
revelation. I say, traditional revelation, in distinction to
original revelation. By the one, I mean that first impression which is
made immediately by God on the mind of any man, to which we cannot set
any bounds; and by the other, those impressions delivered over to
others in words, and the ordinary ways of conveying our conceptions
one to another.
4. Traditional revelation may make us know propositions knowable
also by reason, but not with the same certainty that reason doth.
Secondly, I say that the same truths may be discovered, and conveyed
down from revelation, which are discoverable to us by reason, and by
those ideas we naturally may have. So God might, by revelation,
discover the truth of any proposition in Euclid; as well as men, by
the natural use of their faculties, come to make the discovery
themselves. In all things of this kind there is little need or use
of revelation, God having furnished us with natural and surer means to
arrive at the knowledge of them. For whatsoever truth we come to the
clear discovery of, from the knowledge and contemplation of our own
ideas, will always be certainer to us than those which are conveyed to
us by traditional revelation.
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