Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/136

60 founded. Now whether the minds of men have naturally imprinted on them the ideas of extension and number, I leave to be considered by those who are the patrons of innate principles.

§ 7. "That God is to be worshipped," is, without doubt, as great a truth as any can enter into the mind of man, and deserves the first place amongst all practical principles. But yet it can by no means be thought innate, unless the ideas of God and worship are innate. That the idea the term worship stands for is not in the understanding of children, and a character stamped on the mind in its first original, I think, will be easily granted, by any one that considers how few there be, amongst grown men, who have a clear and distinct notion of it. And, I suppose, there cannot be any thing more ridiculous than to say that children have this practical principle innate, "that God is to be worshipped;" and yet, that they know not what that worship of God is, which is their duty. But to pass by this:

§ 8. If any can be imagined innate, the idea of God may, of all others, for many reasons be thought so; since it is hard to conceive how there should be innate moral principles without an innate idea of a Deity: without a notion of a law-maker, it is impossible to have a notion of a law, and an obligation to observe it. Besides the atheists taken notice of amongst the ancients, and left branded upon the records of history, hath not navigation discovered, in these later ages, whole nations, at the bay of Soldania, in Brazil , in Boranday , and in the Caribbee islands, &c. amongst whom there was to be found no notion of a God, no religion? Nicholaus del Techo in Uteris, ex Paraquaria de Caaiguarum conversione, has these words :