réquite, and fome way to retribute unto his Creator; for if not he that faith, Lord, Lord; but he that doth the will of the Father, fhall be faved; certainly our wills must be our performances, and our intents make out our actions; otherwise our pious labours fhall find anxiety in our graves, and our best endeavours not hope, but fear a resurrection.

SECT. XIV.

*There is but one firft caufe, and four fecond caufes of all things: fome are without efficient, as God; others without matter, as angels: fome without form, as the first matter: but every effence, created or uncreated, hath its final caufe, and some positive end both of its effence and operation: this is the cause I grope after in the works of nature, on this hangs the providence of God; to raife to beaute

ous

ous a ftructure, as the world, and the creatures thereof, was but his art; but their fundry and divided operations, with their predeftinated ends, are from the treafury of his wisdom. In the causes, nature, and affections of the eclipfes of fun and moon, there is most excellent fpeculation; but to dive deeper, and to contemplate a reafon, why his providence hath fo disposed and ordered their motions in that vast circle, as to conjoin and obfcure each other, is a sweeter piece of reason, and a diviner point of philofophy; therefore fometimes, and in fome things, there appears to me as much divinity in Galen's books de ufu partium, as in Suarez's metaphyficks: had Aristotle been as curious in the enquiry of this cause as he was of the other, he had not left behind him an imperfect piece of philosophy, but an abfolute tract

of divinity,

SECT.

SECT. XV.

Natura nihil agit fruftra, is the only indifputable' axiom in philofophy; * there are no Grotesk in nature; nor any thing framed to fill up empty cantons and unneceffary spaces; in the most imperfect creatures, and fuch as were not preferved in the ark, but having their feeds and principles in the womb of nature, are every where where the power of the fun is; in these is the wisdom of his hand difcovered: out of this rank Solomon chose the object of his admiration; indeed what reafon may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants and spiders? what wife hand teacheth them to do what reafon cannot teach us? ruder heads ftand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, whales, elephants, dromedaries and camels; thefe, I confefs, are the coloffus and majestick pieces of her hand; but in thefe narrow engines

engines there are more curious ma-
thematicks, and the civility of these
little citizens more neatly sets forth
the wisdom of their Maker. * Who
admires not Regiomontanus his fly
beyond his eagle, tor wonders not
more at the operation of two fouls
in thofe little bodies, than but one
in the trunk of a cedar? I could
never content my contemplation
with thofe general pieces of won-
object..
der, the flux and reflux of the adm
fea, the encrease of the Nile, the then
converfion of the needle to the he
north; and have ftudied to match
and parallel thofe in the more ob-
vious and neglected pieces of na-
ture, which without further travel
I can do in the cofmography of
myfelf: we carry with us the won-
ders we feek without us; there is
all Africa and her prodigies in us;
we are that bold and adventurous
piece of nature, which he that stu-
dies wifely learns in a compendium,
Paliy, Natural Theology and
beginning of Chap. on astronomy.

BLIOTHE

A.

BOD

what others labour at in a divided

piece and endless volume.

SECT. XVI.

Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity; befides that written one of God, another of his fervant nature, that univerfal and publick manufcript, that lies expanded unto the eyes of all; thofe that never faw him in the one, have discovered him in the other this was the fcripture and theology of the Heathens; the natural motion of the fun made them more admire him, than its fupernatural staHoppage tion did the children of Ifrael; the ordinary effect of nature wrought more admiration in them, than in the other all his miracles: furely the Heathens knew better how to join and read these mystical letters than we Chriftians, who caft a more careless eye on these common hieroglyphicks, and difdain to fuck divinity