ciously remarks, in his Journal du Voyage de Siam, 107177 it consists properly in acknowledging no God at all.
If it be said, that wise men of all nations came to have true conceptions of the unity and infinity of the Deity, I grant it. But then this.
First, Excludes universality of consent in any thing but the name; for those wise men being very few, perhaps one of a thousand, this universality is very narrow.
Secondly, It seems to me plainly to prove, that the truest and best notions men had of God were not imprinted, but acquired by thought and meditation, and a right use of their faculties; since the wise and considerate men of the world, by a right and careful employment of their thoughts and reason, attained true notions in this as well as other things; whilst the lazy and inconsiderate part of men, making far the greater number, took up their notions by chance, from common tradition and vulgar conceptions, without much beating their heads about them. And if it be a reason to think the notion of God innate, because all wise men had it, virtue too must be thought innate, for that also wise men have always had.
§ 16. This was evidently the case of all Gentilism: nor hath even amongst Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, who acknowledge but one God, this doctrine, and the care taken in those nations to teach men to have true notions of a God, prevailed so far as to make men to have the same, and the true ideas of him. How many, even amongst us, will be found, upon inquiry, to fancy him in the shape of a man sitting in heaven, and to have many other absurd and unfit conceptions of him? Christians, as well as Turks, have had whole sects owning and contending earnestly for it, and that the Deity was corporeal, and of human shape: and though we find few amongst us who profess themselves anthropomorphites (though some I have met with that own it) yet, I believe, he that will make it
