213 



tvlth as exquisite art and accuracy, and leave as 

 perfect images behind them to perpetuate their kirn'. 

 Amazing proof and incontestable argument of some 

 superior wisdom : some transcendent contriving miru'^ 

 some divine artificer that made all these wondrous 

 machines, and set them at work ; the animal and the 

 vegetable in these productions are but mere instru- 

 ments under his supreme ruling power, like artless 

 pencils in a painter's hand, to form the images that 

 his thought had before designed ; and it is that God 

 alone, who before all worlds contrived these models 

 of every species in his own original idea, that' ap- 

 points what under-agents he will employ to copy 

 .them. 



In the week of the creation, he bade the earth 

 teem with beasts and plants ; and the earth like a 

 common mother brought forth the lion, the fox, and 

 the dog, as well as the cedar and the tulip, Gen. i. 

 11. 24. He commanded the water to produce the 

 first fish and fowl: behold the waters grow pregnant, 

 the trout and the dolphin break forth into life; the 

 goose and the sparrow arise and shake their wings, 

 Gen. i. 20, 21. But two common parents, earth and 

 water, to the whole animal and vegeiable world! A 

 God needs no more. And though he was pleased to 

 make use of the water and the earth in these first 

 productions, yet the power and the skill were just 

 the same as if he had made them immediately with his 

 own hands. 



Ever since that week of creative wonders, God 

 lias ordered all these creatures to fill the world with 

 inhabitants of their own kind ; and they have obeyed 

 him in a long succession of almost six thousand years. 

 He has granted (shall I say) a divine patent to each 

 creature for the sole production of its own likeness, 

 with an utter prohibition to all the rest; but still 

 under the everlasting influence of his own supreme 

 agency upon the moving atoms that form these plants 

 or animals. God himself is the Creator still. 



And it is evident that he has kept a reserve of 



