A friend has this day suggested tome, that expressions are used in certain 

 parts of this Treatise, which some persons consider as speaking too confidently 

 respiecting Physical Phenomena, as if they could not have been otherwise dis- 

 posed, had sucii been the will of the Creator; or which seem to imply that 

 His method of proceeding under former systems, must of necessity have 

 been the same as those which we witness in the growth of living species of 

 Animals and Vegetables, and in the laws that now regulate the material 

 World. I am not conscious of liaving used any such expressions, but lest I 

 should have inadvertently done so, I gladly take this opportunity of stating, 

 that I accord to the fullest extent with such persons respecting the Omnipo- 

 tence of the Creator, and admit with them, that had it been his pleasure, ail 

 things that exist might have been the immediate results of an Almighty .Aa'- 

 My only endeavour has been to sliow, that as far as we may venture to 

 argue on such a subject, from tlie analogies afforded by the organic and in- 

 organic parts of the world around us, the proofs of design which we disco- 

 ver in the fossil relics of former systems of Creation, differ in no respect 

 from those drawn by Paley and all writers on Physico Theology, from the 

 structure of living organic bodies, and the other actual phenomena of the 

 natural World, in evidence of the Wisdom and Power, and Goodness of the 

 Deity. 



Oxford, April 4, 1837 



