From what has been said, it is plain to me we have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God, than of anything:  our senses have not immediately discovered to us.  Nay, I presume I may say, that we more certainly know that there is a God, than that there is anything else without us.  When I say we know, I mean there is such a knowledge within our reach which we cannot miss, if we will but apply our minds to that, as we do to several other inquiries.

7.  Our idea of a most perfect Being, not the sole Proof of a God.

How far the idea of a most perfect being, which a man, may frame in his mind, does or does not prove the existence of a God, I will not here examine.  For in the different make of men’s tempers and application of their thoughts, some arguments prevail more on one, and some on another, for the confirmation of the same truth.  But yet, I think, this I may say, that it is an ill way of establishing this truth, and silencing atheists, to lay the whole stress of so important a point as this upon that sole foundation:  and take some men’s having that idea of God in their minds, (for it is evident some men have none, and some worse than none, and the most very different,) for the only proof of a Deity; and out of an over fondness of that darling invention, cashier, or at least endeavour to invalidate all other arguments; and forbid us to hearken to those proofs, as being weak or fallacious, which our own existence, and the sensible parts of the universe offer so clearly and cogently to our thoughts, that I deem it impossible for a considering man to withstand them.  For I judge it as certain and clear a truth as can anywhere be delivered, that ’the invisible things of God are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.’  Though our own being furnishes us, as I have shown, with an evident and incontestible proof of a Deity; and I believe nobody can avoid the cogency of it, who will but as carefully attend to it, as to any other demonstration of so many parts:  yet this being so fundamental a truth, and of that consequence, that all religion and genuine morality depend thereon, I doubt not but I shall be forgiven by my reader if I go over some parts of this argument again, and enlarge a little more upon them.

8.  Recapitulation Something from Eternity.

There is no truth more evident than that something must be from eternity.  I never yet heard of any one so unreasonable, or that could suppose so manifest a contradiction, as a time wherein there was perfectly nothing.  This being of all absurdities the greatest, to imagine that pure nothing, the perfect negation and absence of all beings, should ever produce any real existence.

It being, then, unavoidable for all rational creatures to conclude, that something has existed from eternity; let us next see what kind of thing that must be.