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rinths of infinity; and, instead of throwing light upon the subject, we shall 
involve it in tenfold darkness. 
There are even some modern philosophers, who have supposed that the 
formation of plants and animals is beyond the reach and power of the laws 
of nature; and therefore they conceive that the Creator himself, in the first 
individuals of every kind, actually formed and included all the future plants 
and animals that should ever proceed from them complete in all their parts: 
and these were contained in their distinct seeds, decreasing in bulk succes¬ 
sively in proportion almost infinitely less and less, as the seed is less than 
the plant or animal, and as each animal and plant in this miniature or minute 
form, is less than the same plant and animal full grown: and they suppose 
that the daily productions of nature are nothing else but the unravelling of 
these little plants and animals in continual succession, bringing them forth 
into light, and stretching and enlarging their parts by new interwoven 
fibres, &c. 
One great reason they give for this is, that in the minute bud of a plant, 
suppose a tulip even in the winter, they can, by a microscope, discern the 
little stalk and leaves of the flower, and the small triangular pod of seed in 
it: and since matter is infinitely divisible, say they, why may not this 
minute tulip contain another, and that contain a third, and that a fourth, 
even to the number of many thousands in their diminished proportions? 
To this I answer, 1. That from this one position, viz. That the micro¬ 
scope shews the formation of a perfect plant in its bud a few months before 
the time of its appearance in full growth, it is a vast leap to the conclusion, 
that therefore it may contain thousands and millions of such perfect plants 
in their infinitely decreasing proportions, and that for five or six thousand 
years before the times of their appearance. 
2. Arguments drawn merely from infinites, lead our finite reasoning 
powers so far out of their own depth, that we are lost in them, and can 
hardly ever be well assured that our arguments are effectually conclusive, or 
our inferences well drawn. 
3. Suppose every acorn that grew on the first oak should contain, in the 
germ or bud of it (which is a very small part of the acorn isself), all the oaks 
that might be produced from thence, even to the end of the world, in one 
single line of direct succession, this is prodigious and astonishing beyond all 
reasonable belief: but, according to this hypothesis, we must suppose, that 
the germs or buds in each of these acorns, do actually contain also the acorns 
