other truths that they afterwards learned and deduced from them; and there would be nothing more easy than to know what, and how many, they were.  There could be no more doubt about their number than there is about the number of our fingers; and it is like then every system would be ready to give them us by tale.  But since nobody, that I know, has ventured yet to give a catalogue of them, they cannot blame those who doubt of these innate principles; since even they who require men to believe that there are such innate propositions, do not tell us what they are.  It is easy to foresee, that if different men of different sects should go about to give us a list of those innate practical principles, they would set down only such as suited their distinct hypotheses, and were fit to support the doctrines of their particular schools or churches; a plain evidence that there are no such innate truths.  Nay, a great part of men are so far from finding any such innate moral principles in themselves, that, by denying freedom to mankind, and thereby making men no other than bare machines, they take away not only innate, but all moral rules whatsoever, and leave not a possibility to believe any such, to those who cannot conceive how anything can be capable of a law that is not a free agent.  And upon that ground they must necessarily reject all principles of virtue, who cannot put morality and mechanism together, which are not very easy to be reconciled or made consistent.

15.  Lord Herbert’s innate Principles examined.

When I had written this, being informed that my Lord Herbert had, in his book De Veritate, assigned these innate principles, I presently consulted him, hoping to find in a man of so great parts, something that might satisfy me in this point, and put an end to my inquiry.  In his chapter De Instinctu Naturali, I met with these six marks of his Notitice Communes:—­1.  Prioritas. 2.  Independentia. 3.  Universalitas. 4.  Certitudo. 5.  Necessitas, i. e. as he explains it, faciunt ad hominis conservationem. 6.  Modus conformationis, i.e.  Assensus nulla interposita mora.  And at the latter end of his little treatise De Religione Laici, he says this of these innate principles:  Adeo ut non uniuscujusvis religionis confinio arctentur quae ubique vigent veritates.  Sunt enim in ipsa mente caelitus descriptae, nullisque traditionibus, sive scriptis, sive non scriptis, obnoxiae, p.3 And Veritates nostrae catholicae, quae tanquam indubia Dei emata in foro interiori descriptae.

Thus, having given the marks of the innate principles or common notions, and asserted their being imprinted on the minds of men by the hand of God, he proceeds to set them down, and they are these:—­1.  Esse aliquod supremum numen. 2.  Numen illud coli debere. 3.  Virtutem cum pietate conjunctam optimum esse rationem cultus divini. 4.  Resipiscendum esse a peccatis. 5.  Dari praemium vel paenam post hanc vitam transactam.  Though I allow these to be clear truths, and such as, if rightly explained, a rational creature can hardly avoid giving his assent to, yet I think he is far from proving them innate impressions in foro interiori descriptae.  For I must take leave to observe:—­