been as curious in the inquiry of this cause as he was of the other, he had not left behind him an imperfect piece of philosophy, but an absolute tract of divinity.

XV. Natura nihil agit frustra, is the only indisputable axiom in philosophy; there are no grotesques in nature, nor any thing framed to fill up empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces; in the most imperfect creatures, and such as were not preserved in the ark, but having their seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are everywhere where the power of the sun is, in these is the wisdom of his hand discovered; out of this rank Solomon chose the object of his admiration; indeed what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders? What wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us? Ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, whales, elephants, dromedaries and camels; these, I confess, are the colossus and majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow engines there is more curious mathematicks, and the civility of these little citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker. Who admires not Regio-Montanus his fly beyond his eagle? or won

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ders not more at the operation of two souls in those little bodies, than but one in the trunk of a cedar? I could never content my contemplation with those general pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea, the increase of Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north; and have studied to match and parallel those in the more obvious and neglected pieces of nature, which without further travel I can do in the cosmography of myself. We carry with us the wonders we seek without us; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies, wisely learns in a compendium what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume. XVI. Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant nature, that universal and publick manuscript that lies expansed unto the eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one have discovered him in the other: this was the scripture and theology of the heathens; the natural motion of the sun made them more admire him, than its supernatural station did the children of Israel; the ordinary effect of nature wrought more admiration in them, than in the other all his mira

cles; surely the heathens knew better how to join and read these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast a more careless eye on these common hieroglyphicks, and disdain to suck divinity from the flowers of nature. Nor do I so forget God as to adore the name of nature; which I define not with the schools, the principle of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions of his creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolution every day is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course which God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve but by a faculty from that voice which first gave it motion. Now this course of nature God seldom alters or perverts, but like an excellent artist hath so contrived his work, that with the selfsame instrument, without a new creation, he may effect his obscurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth the water with a wood; preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the blast of his mouth might have as easily created; for God is like a skilful geometrician, who when more easily and with one stroke of his compass he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather do this in a

circle or longer way, according to the constituted and forelaid principles of his art; yet this rule of his he doth sometimes pervert, to acquaint the world with his prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our reason should question his power and conclude he could not: and thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she only is; and therefore to ascribe his actions unto her, is to devolve the honour of the principal agent upon the instrument; which if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of our writing. I hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no deformity in any kind or species of creature whatsoever; I cannot tell by what logick we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express those actions of their inward forms, and having past that general visitation of God who saw that all that he had made was good, that is, conformable to his will, which abhors deformity and is the rule of order and beauty. There is no deformity but in monstrosity, wherein notwithstanding there is a kind of beauty, nature so ingeniously contriving

the irregular parts as they become sometimes more remarkable than the principal fabrick. To speak. yet more narrowly, there was never any thing ugly or misshapen but the chaos; wherein notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no deformity, because no form, nor was it yet impregnate by the voice of God. Now nature is not at variance with art nor art with nature, they being both the servants of his providence; art is the perfection of nature; were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos; nature hath made one world and art another. In brief, all things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.

XVII. This is the ordinary and open way of his providence, which art and industry have in a good part discovered, whose effects we may foretell without an oracle; to foreshow these, is not prophecy but prognostication. There is another way full of meanders and labyrinths, whereof the devil and spirits have no exact ephemerides, and that is a more particular and obscure method of his providence, directing the operations of individuals and single essences; this we call fortune, that serpentine and crooked line whereby he draws those actions his wisdom intends, in a more unknown