126 GENERAL ECONOMY OF 



assumption of rotatory motion in the universal mass : and, by- 

 considering the universe still as one general Body, interiorly 

 gravitating and emanating as in the beginning, he may conceive 

 how these motions, not only of the great general Body, but 

 of all its included and correspondent sw&-bodies, is perpetually 

 sustained by a constant supply of the same forces which ope- 

 rated in the beginning, and which constantly inflow from the 

 inexhaustible sources of Divine Spiritual Heat and Light, 

 which mean Love and Wisdom, and which constituted the 

 Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the 

 ending of this grand creative operation ! What can be a more 

 natural thought than that the universe is constructed, and that 

 all its functional operations are carried on, according to the 

 foregoing principles! and what hypothesis relating to this 

 grand subject is so free from difficulties ! 



If the universe is actually constructed on these principles, 

 it manifestly possesses (under the operations of its pervading 

 Divine Life) a self-regulating power which must necessarily 

 give it the utmost conceivable stability the stability of an 

 almost infinite living Organism, exempted from all external 

 causes of death ! Let planets be crowded out of their orbits, 

 if such a thing were possible (which it is not), and they will 

 either spontaneously return again, or new arrangements will be 

 assumed among their associate bodies, which will be according 

 to the law of equilibrium, and equally harmonious with the 

 previous condition. Let planets, or even whole systems, by 

 any imaginable means, be stricken out of existence: there 

 would be an immediate supplying of the vacuum a healing 

 up of the part and scarcely a cicatrice would remain. In short, 

 let the system, by some imagined foreign force, be wounded 

 and deranged in almost any conceivable way : it would still 

 contain an internal power of recuperation. But as a Divinely 



