the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this, the world is still
as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when as
yet there was not a creature that could conceive or say there was a
world. The wisdom of God receives small honor from those vulgar heads
that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his works:
those highly magnify him whose judicious inquiry into his acts, and
deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and
learned admiration.

"Natura nihil agit frustra," is the only indisputable axiom in
philosophy; there are no grotesques in nature; not anything 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 colossi
and majestic pieces of her hand: but in these narrow engines there is
more curious mathematics; 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 wonders 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 the
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 labor at in a divided piece and endless volume.

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
public manuscript that lies expansed unto the eyes of all; those that
never saw him in the