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.

It cannot be said that man gives himself the thoughts he had not before; much less can it be said that he receives them from other men, since it is certain he neither does nor can admit anything from without, unless he finds it in his own bottom, by consulting within him the principles of reason, in order to examine whether what he is told is agreeable or repugnant to them.  Therefore there is an inward school wherein man receives what he neither can give himself, nor expect from other men who live upon trust as well as himself.  Here then, are two reasons I find within me; one of which, is myself, the other is above me.  That which is myself is very imperfect, prejudiced, liable to error, changeable, headstrong, ignorant, and limited; in short it possesses nothing but what is borrowed.  The other is common to all men, and superior to them.  It is perfect, eternal, immutable, ever ready to communicate itself in all places, and to rectify all minds that err and