578 PROOFS OF DESIGN 
Elements, and we further see such convincing 
evidence of intelligence and foresight in the 
adaptation of these primordial Elements to an 
infinity of complex uses, under many future sys- 
tems of animal and vegetable organizations, that 
we can find no reasonable account of the exist- 
ence of all this beautiful and exact machinery, 
if we accept not that which would refer its origin 
to the antecedent Will and Power of a Supreme 
Creator; a Being, whose nature is confessedly 
incomprehensible to our finite faculties, but whom 
the " things which do appear" proclaim to be 
supremely Wise, and Great, and Good. 
To attribute all this harmony and order to any 
fortuitous causes that would exclude Design, 
would be to reject conclusions founded on that 
kind of evidence, on which the human mind re- 
poses with undoubting confidence in all the or- 
dinary business of life, as well as in physical and 
metaphysical investigations. ** Si mundum effi- 
cere potest concursusatomorum, curporticum, cur 
templum, cur domum, cur urbem non potest? quae 
sunt minus operosa et multo quidem faciliora."* 
Such was the interrogatory of the Roman 
Moralist, arising from his contemplation of the 
obvious phenomena, of the natural world ; and 
the conclusion of Bentley from a wider view of 
more recondite phenomena, in an age remarka- 
ble for the advancement of some of the highest 
* Cicero de Natura Deorum, lib. ii. 37. 
