A DISCOURSE OF RELIGION
Among the truths (my lord) which we receive, none more reasonably commands our belief than those which by all men at all times have been assented to. In this number, and highest, I place this great one, that there is a Deity; which the whole world hath been so eager to embrace, that rather than it would have none at all, it hath too often been contented with a very mean one.
That there should be a great Disposer and Orderer of things, a wise Rewarder and Punisher of good and evil, hath appeared so equitable to men, that by instinct they have concluded it necessary. Nature (which doth nothing in vain) having so far imprinted it in us all that, should the envy of predecessors deny the secret to succeeders, they yet would find it out. Of all those little ladders with which we scale heaven, and climb up to our Maker, that seems to me not the worst, of which man is the first step. For but by examining how I, that could contribute nothing to mine own being, should be here, I come to ask the same question for my father, and so am led in a direct line to a last Producer, that must be more than man; for if man made man, why died not I when my father died? since, according to that maxim of the philosophers, the cause taken away, the effect does not remain. Or, if the first man gave himself being, why hath he it not still? since it were unreasonable to imagine anything could have power to give itself life, that had no power to continue it. That there is then a God, will not be so much the dispute, as what this God is, or how to be worshipped, is that which hath troubled poor mortals from the first; nor are they yet in quiet. So great has been the diversity, that some have almost thought God was no less delighted with variety in his service than he was pleased with it in his works. It would not be amiss to take a survey of the world from its cradle, and, with Varro, divide it into three ages—the Unknown, the Fabulous, and the Historical.
The first was a black night, and discovered nothing; the second was a weak and glimmering light, representing things
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