BOOK VIII.

PRACTICAL INFERENCES

FROM THE FOREGOING

SUR VE Y.

N the foregoing feven Books, having taken a

IN

view of what presents itself to us in the heavens, and feen a scene of the greatest grandeur, a work well contrived, admirably adapted, and every way full of magnificence; all that now remains is, to endeavour to make these views and confiderations useful to ourselves. Which I fhall do in the following chapters.

CHAP.

CHAP. I.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD COLLECTED BY THÉ HÉÁTHENS FROM THE WORKS OF THE HEAVENS.

TH

HE firft and most ready and natural deduction we can make from fuch a glorious fcene of workmanship, as is before reprefented, is to confider, who the great workman was?

That the author of all this glorious fcene of things was God, is fuch a conclufion, that even the moft ignorant, and barbarous part of mankind have been able to make from the manifeft fignals vifible therein; fignals fo plain and conclufive, that Tully's Stoic cites it as Ariftotle's opinion, "That if there were fuch a fort of people, that had always lived under the earth, in good and fplendid habitations, adorned with imagery and pictures, and furnished with all things that thofe accounted happy abound with; and fuppofing that thefe people had never at any time gone out upon the earth, but only by report A a 2 had

ID: Nat. Deor. L. ii. C. 37.

had heard there was such a thing as a Deity, and a power of the gods; and that a certain time afterwards, the earth fhould open, and this people get out of their hidden manfions into the places we inhabit; when on the fudden they fhould fee the earth, the feas, and the heavens; perceive the magnitude of the clouds, and the force of the winds; behold the fun, and its grandeur and beauty; and know its power in making the day, by diffufing his light throughout the whole heavens; and when the night had overfpread the earth with darkness, they should difcern the whole heavens befpread and adorned with ftars, and fee the variety of the moon's phases in her increase and decrease, together with the rifings and fettings, and the stated and immutable courfes of all thefe throughout all eternity; this people, when they fhould fee all these things, would infallibly imagine that there are Gods, and that thofe grand works were the works of the Gods." Thus have we the opinion. and conclufion of two eminent heathens together, Ariftotle, and Tully's Stoic.

And if the

heavens fo plainly declare the glory of God, and the firmament fheweth his

handy-work;' if thofe characters, thofe im

preffes

Pfalm xix. 1, &c.,

preffes of the Divine hand, are fo legible, that their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world, fo that there is no language, tongue, or fpeech where their voice is not heard;' nay, if these things are such, that even a fubterraneous people would at first fight, conclude them to be God's work how daring and impudent, how unworthy of a rational Being, is it, to deny thefe works to God, and afcribe them to any thing, yea, a mere nothing, as chance is, rather than God? Tully's Stoic, laft mentioned, denieth him to be a man who fhould do this. His words are, "Who would fay he is a man, who when he should behold the motion of the heavens to be fo certain, and the orders of the ftars fo established, and all things fo well connected and adapted together, and deny that reafon was here, and say these things were made by chance, which are managed with fuch profound counsel, that with all our wit we are not able to fathom them? What! faith he, when we fee a thing moved by fome certain device, as a fphere, the hours, and many things befides; we make no doubt but that these are the works of reafon. And fo when we fee the noble train of the heavens, moved and wheel

A a 3

ed

t

Cicero, ibid. cap. 38.

ed about, with an admirable pace, and in the most constant manner, making those anniversary changes, fo neceffary to the good and prefervation of all things; do we doubt whether thefe things are done by reafon, yea, by fome more excellent and divine reafon? For, faith he, fetting afide the fubtilties of difputation, we may actually behold with our eyes, in fome measure, the beauty of thofe things which we affert are ordered by the Divine Providence." And then he enters into a long detail of particulars of this kind, too many to be named here.

Thus Cicero, throughout whofe works so many paffages of this nature occur, that it would be endless to cite them: and therefore one obfervation that fhews what his opinion was of the fenfe of mankind in the matter, fhall clofe what he faith, and that is in his Book de Legibus", where he faith, "Among all the tribes of animals, none but man hath any fenfe of a God; and arnong mankind there is no nation fo favage and barbarous, which although ignorant of what God it ought to have, yet well knows it ought to have

one."

And

L. i. chap. 8.