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, p. 72, edit. 1650, I met with these six marks of his Notitiæ 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 nullâ interpositâ morâ. 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 quæ uhique vigent veritates. Sunt enim in ipsâ mente cælitiis descriptæ, nullisque traditionibus, sive scriptis, sive non scriptis, ohnoxiæ, p. 3. And, Veritates nostræ catholicæ quæ tanquam indubia Dei effata in for interiori descriptæ. 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 comjunctam optimam esse rationem cultûs divini. 4. Resipiscendum esse à peccatis. 5. Dari præmium vel pænam 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 descriptæ. For I must take leave to observe,
§ 16. First, that these five propositions are either not all, or more than all, those common notions writ on our minds by the finger of God, if it were reasonable to believe any at all to be so written: since there are other propositions, which, even by his own rules, have as just a pretence to such an original, and may be as well admitted for innate principles, as at least some of these five he enumerates, viz. "do as thou wouldest be done unto;" and, perhaps, some hundreds of others, when well considered.
