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 miracles: 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 hieroglyphics 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, to be 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 did give 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
skillful geometrician, who when more easily, and with one stroke of his
compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather to 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 honor 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 honor of our writing. I
hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no
deformity in any kind of species whatsoever: I cannot tell by what
logic 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.