56 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



the present order of nature is insufficient to prove 

 the existence of an intelligent Creator, but that no 

 imaginable order would be sufficient to prove it ; 

 that 710 contrivance, were it ever so mechanical, 

 ever so precise, ever so clear, ever so perfectly 

 like those which we ourselves employ, would sup- 

 port this conclusion — a doctrine, to which I con- 

 ceive no sound mind can assent. 



The force, however, of the reasoning is some- 

 times sunk by our taking up with mere names. 

 We have already noticed,* and we must here no- 

 tice again, the misapphcation of the term "law," 

 and the mistake concerning the idea which that 

 term expresses in physics, whenever such idea is 

 made to take the place of power, and still more of 

 an intelligent power, and, as such, to be assigned 

 for the cause of any thing, or of any property of 

 any thing, that exists. This is what we are se- 

 cretly apt to do, when we speak of organized 

 bodies (plants, for instance, or animals,) owing their 

 production, their form, their growth, their quali- 

 ties, their beauty, their use, to any law or laws of 

 nature ; and when we are contented to sit down 

 with that answer to our inquiries concerning them. 

 I say once more, that it is a perversion of language 

 to assign any law, as the efficient, operative cause 

 of any thing. A law pre-supposes an agent, for it 

 only is the mode according to which an agent pro- 

 ceeds ; it implies a power, for it is the order ac- 



♦ Ch. I. sect. vii. 



