This observation has just the same sense and acuteness in it, as if it had been said, _It is certainly no good argument against_ the sufficiency of the divine healthfulness _of human nature, that men could not be sickly, except they left it_, and _fell into various distempers: or, against the_ sufficiency of the divine strength of natural courage, that men could not be timorous, till they left it, and followed vain fears. For, to prove that reason is sufficient, because every thing that is absurd, is contrary to reason, is like proving our healthfulness to be sufficient, because all distempers are contrary to it: or our courage to be sufficient, because fears and cowardice are contrary to it.
Besides, how is it that men leave their reason? Why, just as ignorant men leave their knowledge; as dull people leave their wit, or cowards leave their courage. The first part of this paragraph tells you of a sufficiency of the divine light of nature: well; What has this divine light of nature done? What sufficient effects has it had? Why, it has covered all the world with darkness.
Again: Supposing that all mankind, even the wisest nations, have for this six thousand years been thus imposed upon, not knowing how to distinguish idle tales and senseless traditions from true religion; is not this a noble foundation for this writer to build the _sufficiency of the divine light of nature upon_? For supposing it had been in the greatest degree insufficient, what other effect could have followed from it, but only this, that _all mankind_, even the _wisest nations_, should have been over-run with error? And is it not strange, that effects should bear no proportion to their causes; that the same things should follow from the _sufficiency_ of the divine light of nature, which must have followed from its _greatest insufficiency_?
* And must not the enemies of _reason_ and _free-thinking_ be forced to confess, that this writer hath chosen an excellent guide for himself; since he so fully acknowledges, that no one yet has been rightly guided by it? Must not his present undertaking be granted to be the effect of cool and sober deliberation, since it only calls people of _all_, even the _meanest capacities_, to such an use of their reason, as the wisest of men and nations have always been strangers to?