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The elements act upon

wherever we go.

⚫ one another, electricity operates, the tides rife and fall, the magnetic needle elects its pofition, in one region of the earth and fea, as well as in another. One atmosphere invests all parts of the globe, and connects all: one fun illuminates; one moon exerts its specific attraction upon all parts. If there be a variety in natural effects, as, e. g. in the tides of different feas, that very variety is the refult of the fame cause, acting under different circummany cafes this is proved; in all

In

ftances.
is probable.

The inspection and comparison of living forms, add to this argument examples without number. Of all large terreftrial animals the ftructure is very much alike. Their fenfes nearly the fame. Their natural functions and paffions nearly the fame. Their vifcera nearly the fame, both in fubftance, fhape, and office. Digeftion, nutrition, circulation, fecretion, go in all. The great on, in a fimilar manner, in all. circulating fluid is the fame: for, I think, no difference has been discovered in the properties of blood, from whatever animal it be drawn. The experiment of transfufion proves, that the blood of one animal will ferve for an

other.

other. The Skeletons also of the larger terreftrial animals, fhew particular varieties, but ftill under a great general affinity. The refemblance is fomewhat lefs, yet fufficiently evident, between quadrupeds and birds. They are alike in five refpects, for one in which they differ.

In fib, which belong to another department, as it were, of nature, the points of comparison become fewer. But we never lofe fight of our analogy, e. g. we ftill meet with a ftomach, a liver, a fpine; with bile and blood; with teeth; with eyes, which eyes are only flightly varied from our own, and which variation, in truth, demonftrates, not an interruption, but a continuance, of the fame exquifite plan; for it is the adaptation of the organ to the element, viz. to the different refraction of light paffing into the eye out of a denfer medium. The provinces, alfo, themfelves of water and earth, are connected by the fpecies of animals which inhabit both; and alfo by a large tribe of aquatic animals, which closely resemble the terrestrial in their internal ftructure: I mean the cetaceous tribe, which have hot blood, refpiring lungs, bowels, and other effential parts, like thofe of land animals.

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animals. This fimilitude, furely, befpeaks the fame creation and the faine Creator.

Infects and fell fish appear to me to differ from other claffes of animals the most widely of any. Yet even here, beside many points of particular refemblance, there exifts a general relation of a peculiar kind. It is the relation. of inverfion: the law of contrariety: namely, that, whereas, in other animals, the bones, to which the muscles are attached, lie within the body, in infects and fhell fish they lie on the ouifide of it. The fhell of a lobster performs to the animal the office of a bone, by furnishing to the tendons that fixed bafis or immoveable fulcrum, without which mechanically they could not act. The cruft of an infect is its fhell, and anfwers the like purpose.. The fhell alfo of an oyster ftands in the place of a bone; the bafes of the mufcles being fixed to it, in the fame manner, as, in other animals, they are fixed to the bones. All which (under wonderful varieties, indeed, and adaptations of form) confeffes an imitation, a remembrance, a carrying on, of the fame plan.

The obfervations, here made, are equally. applicable to plants; but I think unneceflary to be pursued. It is a very ftriking circum

ftance,

ftance, and alone fufficient to prove all which we contend for, that, in this part likewise of organized nature, we perceive a continuation of the fexual fyftem.

Certain however it is, that the whole argument for the divine unity, goes no further than to an unity of counfel.

It may likewise be acknowledged, that no arguments which we are in poffeffion of, exclude the miniftry of fubordinate agents. If fuch there be, they act under a prefiding, a controlling, will; because they act according to certain general restrictions, by certain common rules, and, as it should seem, upon a general plan but still such agents, and different ranks, and claffes, and degrees of them, may be employed.

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CHAPTER XXVI.

THE GOODNESS OF THE DEITY.

THE proof of the divine goodness rests upon two propofitions, each, as we contend, capable of being made out by obfervations drawn from the appearances of nature.

The firft is," that, in a vaft plurality of inftances in which contrivance is perceived, the defign of the contrivance is beneficial.

The fecond, "that the Deity has fuperadded pleasure to animal fenfations, beyond what was neceffary for any other purpose, or when the purpose, fo far as it was neceffary, might have been effected by the operation of pain."

First, "in a vaft plurality of inftances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial."

No productions of nature difplay contrivance fo manifeftly as the parts of animals; and the parts of animals have all of them, I believe, a real, and, with very few excep

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