For what blindness and ignorance of God, his nature and will, his providence and government, there is in the hearts of all men in their corrupt and infirm nature, is evident from the doubts which stick in the hearts of everyone, concerning which Plato was right when he wisely said, "That the minds of men are so overpowered with conviction by the laws of the motion of the heavenly bodies and other testimonies of nature, that they are compelled to confess that the world had for its Creator an eternal and almighty divine Mind." And yet we find that this knowledge and this conviction are darkened and deranged when we consider how enormous and confused all things are in the world and in this life, and when we find ourselves so often plunged into such great misery and need without help or rescue as if there were no God left to his creatures. From such doubts all those mad-brained opinions of philosophers have arisen. Some, as the Epicureans, denied the existence of God altogether; others, as Aristotle and the Stoics, believed God was an eternal mind, yet bound and confined him to second causes; just in the same way as the poets fable that Saturn was bound by Jupiter. Thus they ascribe to him no action, but that which the general concurrence of second causes produces. Hence having their minds infatuated with this delirium, they can neither ask any good thing of God, nor expect any good thing from him, because, with them events are necessarily only consequents which responsively follow upon their natural first causes. Therefore, while these men thus reasoned, they did not bring forth their own private and personal opinions only, but the common errors which lie concealed naturally in the minds of the whole human race. The greatest part of mankind fix their eyes upon second causes; but these never raise them so high as the great Over-ruler of all; so as to wait for the government or pressing forth of second causes from and by him, as Elijah did, when he prayed for rain in the midst of a drought, and as Isaiah did, when he drove back an army of the enemy by prayer.