prodigious follies,
madness, vexations, persecutions, absurdities, impossibilities, these
impostors, heretics, &c., have thrust upon the world, what strange effects
shall be shown in the symptoms.

Now the means by which, or advantages the devil and his infernal ministers
take, so to delude and disquiet the world with such idle ceremonies, false
doctrines, superstitious fopperies, are from themselves, innate fear,
ignorance, simplicity, hope and fear, those two battering cannons and
principal engines, with their objects, reward and punishment, purgatory,
_Limbus Patrum_, &c. which now more than ever tyrannise; [6433]"for what
province is free from atheism, superstition, idolatry, schism, heresy,
impiety, their factors and followers?" thence they proceed, and from that
same decayed image of God, which is yet remaining in us.

[6434] "Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri
Jussit."------

Our own conscience doth dictate so much unto us, we know there is a God and
nature doth inform us; _Nulla gens tam barbara_ (saith Tully) _cui non
insideat haec persuasio Deum esse; sed nec Scytha, nec Groecus, nec Persa,
nec Hyperboreus dissentiet_ (as Maximus Tyrius the Platonist _ser. 1._
farther adds) _nec continentis nec insularum habitator_, let him dwell
where he will, in what coast soever, there is no nation so barbarous that
is not persuaded there is a God. It is a wonder to read of that infinite
superstition amongst the Indians in this kind, of their tenets in America,
_pro suo quisque libitu varias res venerabantur superstitiose, plantas,
animalia, montes, &c. omne quod amabant aut horrebant_ (some few places
excepted as he grants, that had no God at all). So "the heavens declare the
glory of God, and the firmament declares his handy work," Psalm xix. "Every
creature will evince it;" _Praesentemque refert quaelibet herba deum.
Nolentes sciunt, fatentur inviti_, as the said Tyrius proceeds, will or
nill, they must acknowledge it. The philosophers, Socrates, Plato,
Plotinus, Pythagoras, Trismegistus, Seneca, Epictetus, those Magi, Druids,
&c. went as far as they could by the light of nature; [6435]_multa
praeclara, de natura Dei seripta reliquerunt_, "writ many things well of
the nature of God, but they had but a confused light, a glimpse,"

[6436] "Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna
Est iter in sylvis,"------

"as he that walks by moonshine in a wood," they groped in the dark; they
had a gross know