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of divine Providence, to represent the great engine of 

 this visible world, as moving onward in its appointed 

 course, without the continual interposure of his hand I 

 It is granted, indeed, that his hand is ever active in 

 preserving all the parts of matter, in all their motions, 

 according to these uniform laws : but I think it is ra. 

 ther derogatory to his infinite wisdom, to imagine that 

 he would not make the vegetable and animal, as well 

 as the inanimate world, of such sort of workmanship, 

 as might regularly move onward in this manner for 

 five or six thousand years, without putting a new 

 hand to it ten thousand times ef ery hour ; I say 

 ten thousand times every hour, for there is not an 

 hour nor a moment passes, wherein there are not many 

 millions of plants and animals actually forming in 

 the southern or northern climates. 



He that'can ruake a clock, with a great variety of 

 beauties and motions, to go regularly a twelvemonth 

 together, is certainly a skilful artist ; but if he must 

 put his own hand to assist those motions every hour, 

 or else the engine will stand still, or the wheels move 

 at random, we conceive a much meaner opinion of his 

 performance and his skill. On the other hand, how 

 glorious and divine an artificer would he be called that 

 should nave made two of these pieces of Clock-work 

 above five thousand years ago, and contrived such 

 hidden springs and motions within them, that they 

 should have joined together, to perpetuate the species, 

 and thus continue the same sort of clocks in more than 

 a hundred successions down to this day ? though 

 each of their springs might fail in forty years time, 

 and their motions cease, or their materials decay, yet 

 that by the means of these two original engines, they 

 should be engines of the same kiud multiplied upon 

 the face of the earth, by the same rules of motion 

 which the artist had established in the day when he 

 first formed them. 



Such is the workmanship of God ; for nature IB 

 nothing but his art. Such is the amazing penetra- 

 tion of divine skill, such the long reach of his foresight, 



