The Existence of GodFénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe-
Religion
The Existence of God
Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe-
God; Ontology
Men may speak and discourse to us in order to instruct us: but we
cannot believe them any farther, than we find a certain conformity
or agreement between what they say, and what the inward master says.
After they have exhausted all their arguments, we must still return,
and hearken to him, for a final decision. If a man should tell us
that a part equals the whole of which it is a part, we should not be
able to forbear laughing, and instead of persuading us, he would
make himself ridiculous to us. It is in the very bottom of
ourselves, by consulting the inward master, that we must find the
truths that are taught us, that is, which are outwardly proposed to
us. Thus, properly speaking, there is but one true Master, who
teaches all, and without whom one learns nothing. Other masters
always refer and bring us back to that inward school where he alone
speaks. It is there we receive what we have not; it is there we
learn what we were ignorant of; and find what we had lost by
oblivion. It is in the intimate bottom of ourselves, he keeps in
store for us certain truths, that lie, as it were, buried, but which
revive upon occasion; and it is there, in short, that we reject the
falsehood we had embraced. Far from judging that master, it is by
him alone we are judged peremptorily in all things. He is a judge
disinterested, impartial, and superior to us. We may, indeed,
refuse hearing him, and raise a din to stun our ears: but when we
hear him it is not in our power to contradict him. Nothing is more
unlike man than that invisible master that instructs and judges him
with so much severity, uprightness, and perfection. Thus our
limited, uncertain, defective, fallible reason, is but a feeble and
momentaneous inspiration of a primitive, supreme, and immutable
reason, which communicates itself with measure, to all intelligent
beings.
SECT. LX. The Superior Reason that resides in Man is God Himself;
and whatever has been above discovered to be in Man, are evident
Footsteps of the Deity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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