14 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



the contrivance must have had a contriver. That 

 former one from one preceding it : no alteration 

 still ; a contriver is still necessary. No tendency 

 is perceived, no approach towards a diminution of 

 this necessity. It is the same with any and every 

 succession of these machines; a succession often, 

 of a hundred, of a thousand ; with one series, as 

 with another ; a series which is finite, as with a 

 series which is infinite. In whatever other re- 

 spects they may differ, in this they do not. In 

 all, equally, contrivance and design are unaccount- 

 ed for. 



The question is not simply. How came the first 

 watch into existence ? which question, it may be 

 pretended, is done away by supposing the series 

 of watches thus produced from one another to 

 have been infinite, and consequently to have had 

 no suchj^?^^^, for which it was necessary to provide 

 a cause. This, perhaps, would have been nearly 

 the state of the question, if nothing had been be- 

 fore us but an unorganized, unmechanized sub- 

 stance, without mark or indication of contrivance. 

 It might be difficult to show that such substance 

 could not have existed from eternity, either in 

 succession (if it were possible, which I think it is 

 not, for unorganized bodies to spring from one an- 

 other,) or by individual perpetuity. But that is 

 not the question now. To suppose it to be so, is 

 to suppose that it made no diflference whether he 

 had found a watch or a stone. As it is, the meta- 

 physics of that question have no place : for, in the 



