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.
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