88 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



OF THE UMTY OF THE DEITY. 



Of the " Unity of the Deity," the proof is, tlie 

 uniformity of plan observable in the universe. The 

 universe itself is a system ; each part either de- 

 pending upon other parts, or being connected with 

 other parts by some common law of motion, or 

 by the presence of some common substance. One 

 principle of gravitation causes a stone to drop to- 

 wards the earth, and the moon to wheel round it. 

 One law of attraction carries all the different pla- 

 nets about the sun.-^ This philosophers demon- 



22 Bishop Brinkley considers the subject of nebulae and double 

 stars " as hardly yet sufficiently investigated " for affording grounds 

 of additional illustration to the cultivator of Natural Theology ; 

 and it is much to be regretted that he, on this account, abandon- 

 ed the design, which he says he had at one time formed, or add- 

 ing some notes upon this branch of astronomical science. The 

 Appendix will contain a reference to this subject, particularly to 

 the additional argument drawn from the revolution of double 

 stars in favour of the universal extension of gravitation. 



The fact of the heavenly bodies which form our system all 

 moving in the same direction of revolution, is dcscrvins: of the 

 deepest attention when we consider that it leads to the most im- 

 portant result of the stability of the system explained above, (chap, 

 xxii., notes;) and that it is one of innumerable arrangements 

 which might have been made, and none of which could have led 

 to this result. In any other case equal roots, or imaginary roots, 

 or both, must have found their way into the equation from which 

 the law of stability is deduced. {Mic C6l. 1. ii. c. 7, g. 55, 57, 



