NATURAIi THEOIiOGY. 



CHAPTER I. 



STATE OF THE ARGUMENT 



IN crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot agaiiisi 

 'i stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, 

 { might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the 

 xiontrary, it had lain there forever : nor would it perhaps 

 be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But 

 suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it 

 should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that 

 place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had be- 

 fore given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might 

 have always been there. Yet why should not this answer 

 serve for the watch, as well as for the stone ? Why is it 

 Hot as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For 

 this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to 

 inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discov- 

 er in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put 

 together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and ad- 

 justed as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated 

 as to point out the hour of the day ; that, if the several 

 parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or of 

 a different size from what they are, or placed after any oth- 

 er manner, or in any other order, than that in which they 

 are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried 

 on in the machine, or none which would have answered the 

 use* that is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the 

 plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one 

 result : [See Plate I.] — We see a cylindrical box containing a 

 coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavour to relax itself, 

 turns round the box. We next observe a flexible chain (artifi- 

 cially wrought for the sake of flexure) communicating the ac- 

 tion of the spring from the box to the fusee. We then find a 

 B 



