OP THE NATURAL ATTRIBUTES, &/C, ^49 



could it so determine the fluids of its body, as to inchoate 

 the formation of an eye? or, suppose the eye formed, would 

 the perception follow? The same of the other senses. 

 And this objection holds its force, ascribe what you will to 

 the hand of time, to the power of habit, to changes, too slow- 

 to be observed by man, or brought within any comparison 

 which he is able to make of past things with the present : 

 concede what you please to these arbitrary and unattested 

 suppositions, how will they help you ? Here is n.) incep- 

 tion. No laws, no course, no powers jf naiure which pre- 

 vail at present, nor any analogous to these, could give com- 

 mencement to a new sense. And it is in vain to inquire, 

 how that might proceed, which could never begin. 



I think the senses, to be the most inconsistent with the 

 hypothesis before us, of any part of the animal frame. But 

 other parts are sufficiently so. The solution does not ap- 

 ply to the parts of animals, which have little in them of mo- 

 tion. It we could suppose jomts and muscles to be gradu- 

 ally formed by action and exercise, what action or exercise 

 could form a skull, and fill it with brains ? No effort of the 

 animal could detf rmine the clothing of its skin What co- 

 natus could give prickles to the porcupine or hedgehog, or 

 to the sheep its fleece ? 



In the last place ; what do these appetencies mean when 

 applied to plants ? I am not able to give a signification to 

 the term, which can be transferred from animals to plants ; 

 or which is common to both. Yet a no less successful or- 

 ganization is found in plants, than what obtains in animals. 

 A solution is wanted for one as well as the other. 



Upon the whole ; after all the schemes and struggles of a 

 reluctant philosophy, the necessary resort is to a Deity. The 

 marks of design are too strong to be got over. Design must 

 have had a designer. That designer must have been a 

 person. That person is God. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



OP THE NATURAL ATTRIBUTES OF THE DEITY. 



It is an immense conclusion, that there is a God ; a 

 perceiving, intelligent, designing Being ; at the head of cre- 

 ation, and from whose will it proceeded. The attributes of 

 such a Being, suppose his reality to be proved, must be ad- 

 X2 



