IN SIMP1.E MINERALS. 
570 
branches of Physical Science, has been most 
abundantly confirmed by the manifold discove- 
ries of a succeeding century. We therefore of 
the present age have a thousand additional rea- 
sons to affirm with him, that “ though universal 
matter should have endured from everlasting, 
divided into infinite particles in the Epicurean 
way, and though motion should have been coeval 
and coeternal with it ; yet those particles or atoms 
could never of themselves, by omnifarious kinds 
of motion, whether fortuitous or mechanical, have 
fallen, or been disposed into this or a like visible 
systeln.”* — Bentley, Serm. vi. of Atheism, p. 192. 
* Dr. Prout lias pursued this subject still further in the third 
Chapter of his Bridgewater Treatise, and shewn that the molecu- 
lar constitution of matter with its admirable adaptations to the 
economy of the natural world, cannot have endured from eternity, 
and is by no means a necessary condition of its existence ; but 
has resulted from the Will of some intelligent and voluntary 
Agent, possessing power commensurate with his Will. 
In the first Section of his fourth Chapter the same author has 
also so clearly shown the great extent to wliich several of the most 
common mineral substances e. g. lime, magnesia, and iron, enter 
into the composition of animal and vegetable bodies, and has so 
fully set forth the evidences of design in the constitution and pro- 
perties of the few simple substances, viz. fifty-four Elementary 
principles, into some one or more of which the component mate- 
rials of all the three great kingdoms of Nature can be resolved, 
that I deem it superfluous to repeat in another foim, the sub- 
stance of arguments which have been so well and fully drawn 
by my learned Colleague, from those phenomena of the mineral 
Elements, which form no small part of the evidence afforded by 
the Chemistry of Mineralogy, in proof of the Wisdom, and Power, 
and Goodness of the Creator. 
