How, by
these means, they come to frame in their minds an idea men have of a
Deity, I shall hereafter show.
14. Contrary and inconsistent ideas of God under the same name.
Can it be thought that the ideas men have of God are the characters and
marks of himself, engraven in their minds by his own finger, when we see
that, in the same country, under one and the same name, men have far
different, nay often contrary and inconsistent ideas and conceptions of
him? Their agreeing in a name, or sound, will scarce prove an innate
notion of him.
15. Gross ideas of God.
What true or tolerable notion of a Deity could they have, who
acknowledged and worshipped hundreds? Every deity that they owned above
one was an infallible evidence of their ignorance of Him, and a proof
that they had no true notion of God, where unity, infinity, and
eternity were excluded. To which, if we add their gross conceptions
of corporeity, expressed in their images and representations of their
deities; the amours, marriages, copulations, lusts, quarrels, and other
mean qualities attributed by them to their gods; we shall have little
reason to think that the heathen world, i.
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