120 ON EQUIVOCAL GENERATION - . 



found to be the future plant or animal in miniature, contain- 

 ing every thing essential to it when full grown, only requiring 

 to have the several organs enlarged, and the interstices filled 

 with extraneous nutritious matter. When the external form 

 undergoes the greatest change, as from 'an aquatic insect to a 

 flying gnat, a caterpillar to a crysalis, a crys"alis to a butterfly, 

 or a tadpole to a frog, there is nothing new in the organization; 

 all the parts of the gnat,, the butterfly, and the frog, having 

 really existed, though not appearing to the common observer 

 in the forms in which they are first seen. In like manner, 

 every thing essential to the oak is found in the acorn. 



It is now, however, maintained that bodies as exquisitely 

 organized as any that we are acquainted with (for this is true 

 of the smallest insect, as well as of the largest- animal) arise, 

 without the interposition of a creative power, from substances 

 that have no organization at all, from mere brute matter — earth, 

 water, or mucilage, in a certain degree of heat. Sometimes 

 the term organic particles is "made use of, as the origin of the 

 plants and animals that are said to be produced this way; but 

 as it is without meaning, the germs of those specific plants 

 and animals which are said to come from them, and a great 

 variety of these organized bodies are said to arise from the same 

 organic particles, the case is not materially different. Still, 

 completely organized bodies, of specific kinds, are maintain- 

 ed to be produced from substances that could not have any na- 

 tural connexion with them, or particular relation to them. 

 And this I assert is nothing less than the production of an 

 effect without any adequate cause. If the organic particle, 

 from which an oak is produced be not precisely an acorn, 

 the production of it from any thing else is as much a miracle, 

 and out of the course of nature, as if it had come from a bean, 

 or a pea, or absolutely from nothing at all; and if miracles 

 be denied, (as they are, I believe, by all the advocates for 

 this doctrine of equivocal generation,) these plants and animals, 

 completely organized as they are found to be, as well adopted 

 to their destined places and uses in the general system as the 

 largest plants and animals, have no intelligent cause whatever, 

 which is unquestionably atheism. For if one part of the sys- 



