sovereignty to himself, and has displayed the ensigns 

 of it in some important hours. Egypt was once a 

 glorious and tremendous scene of this sovereignty, it 

 was there that he ordered the rod of Moses, a dry 

 and lifeless vegetable, to raise a swarm of living ani- 

 mals, to call up a brood of lice in millions without a 

 parent, and to animate the dust of the ground into 

 a noisome army. 



It was there he bid Moses wave the same rod over 

 the streams and the ponds, arid the silent rod under 

 divine influence would bring forth croaking legions 

 out of the waters without number. 



But these are his work of miracle and astonish- 

 ment, when he has a mind to shew himself the so- 

 vereign and the controller of nature, without his im- 

 mediate commission not one creature can invade the 

 province of another, nor perform any thing of this 

 work but within its own peculiar tribe. Even man ? 

 the glory of this lower creation, and the wisest thing 

 on earth, would in vain attempt to make one of these 

 common vegetables, or these curious animated moving 

 machines. Not all the united powers of human na- 

 ture, nor a council of the nicest artificers with all 

 their enginery and skill, can form the least gart of 

 these works, can compose a fox's tail, a goose-quill, 

 or a tulip-leaf. Nature is the art of God, and it must 

 for ever be unrivalled by the sons of men. 



Yet man can produce a man. Admirable effect ; 

 but artless cause 2 A poor, limited, inferior agent 1 

 The plant and the brute in this matter are his rivals, 

 and his equals too. The human parent and the pa- 

 rent bird form their own images with equal skill, 

 and are confined each to his own work. So the 

 iron seal transfers its own figure to the clay with as 

 much exactness and curiosity as the golden one, both 

 can transfer only their own figure. 



This appears to me a glorious instance wherein the 

 wisdom and power of God maintain their own su. 

 preuiacy, and triumph over all the boasted reason 

 and intellectual skill of men : that the wisest son of 



