412 SYSTEM OF INSECTS. 



curiosity and the desire of information concerning these 

 high and important subjects would stimulate him to the 

 study of the mystic volume placed before him ; in the 

 progress of which he would doubtless be assisted by that 

 DIVINE guidance, which even now is with those who 

 honestly seek the truth. Both divines and philosophers 

 have embraced this opinion, which is built upon the 

 word of GOD itself a . 



This last purpose of the Creator was the root of the 

 analogies, connecting different objects with each other 

 that have no real affinity, observable in the works of 

 creation : so that from the bottom to the top of the scale 

 of being, there is many a series of analogous forms, as 

 well as of concatenated ones ; and the intire system of 

 nature is representative, as well as operative: it is a kind 

 of Janus bifrons, which requires to be studied in two as- 

 pects looking different ways. To what degree of know- 

 ledge the primeval races of men attained after the fall, 

 by the contemplation and study of this book of nature, 

 we are no where informed ; but we learn from the highest 

 authority that the revelation that GOD thus made of 

 himself was in time corrupted, by those that professing 

 themselves to be wise became fools, to the grossest ido- 

 latry, which sunk men in the lowest depths of sensuality, 

 vice, and wickedness 5 . 



* The most natural and consistent interpretation of 1 Cor. xiii. 

 12, *Btefro{ifv ya.^ ot^ri S; s fooirrgv iv iviy^y,n t is, that " we see 

 now as it were in a mirror the glory of God reflected enigmatically 

 by the things that he has made." Comp. Rom. i. 20. Our Sa- 

 viour (Luke x. 19.) calls serpents and scorpions the power of the 

 enemy; which can only mean that they me figures or symbols of the 

 enemy. 



" Rom, i. 20, to the end of the chapter. 



