Physico-theology

Having dispatched the Motion of Animals, let us in the next Place consider the Place which the infinitely wise Creator hath appointed them to move and act, and perform the Offices of the Creation in. And here we find every Particular well ordered. All Parts of our Terraqueous Globe fit for an Animal to live and act in, are sufficiently stocked with proper Inhabitants: The watery Element (unfit, one would think, for Respiration and Life) abounding with Creatures fitted for it; its Bowels abundantly stored, and its Surface well bespread. The Earth also is plentifully stocked in all its Parts, where Animals can be of any Use; not probably the deepest Bowels thereof indeed, being Parts in all likelihood unfit for Habitation and Action, and where a living Creature would be useless in the World; but the Surface every where abundantly stored.

But that which is most considerable in this Matter, and plainly sheweth the divine Management in the Case, is, that those Creatures are manifestly designed for the Place in which they are, and the Use and Services they perform therein. If all the Animals of our Globe had been made by Chance, or placed by Chance, or without the divine Providence, their Organs would have been otherwise than they are, and their Place and Residence confused and jumbled. Their Organs (for Instance) of Respiration, of Vision, and of Motion, would have fitted any Medium, or have needed none; their Stomachs would have served any Food, and their Blood, and Covering of their Bodies been made for any Clime, or only one Clime. Consequently all the Animal World would have been in a confused, inconvenient, and disorderly Commixture. One Animal would have wanted Food, another Habitation, and most of them Safety. They would have all flocked to one, or a few Places, taken up their Rest in the Temperate Zones only, and coveted one Food, the easiest to be come at, and most specious in shew; and so would have poisoned, starved, or greatly incommoded one another. Bur as the Matter is now ordered, the Globe is equally bespread, so that no Place wanteth proper Inhabitants, nor any Creature is destitute of a proper Place, and all Things necessary to its Life, Health, and Pleasure. As the Surface of the Terraqueous Globe is covered with different Soils, with Hills and Vales, with Seas, Rivers, Lakes and Ponds, with divers Trees and Plants, in the several Places; so all these have their Animal Inhabitants, whole Organs of Life and Action are manifestly adapted to such and such Places and Things; whose Food and Physick, and every other Convenience of Life, is to be met with in that very Place appointed it. The watery, the amphibious[a], the airy Inhabitants, and those on the dry Land Surface, and the Subterraneous under it, they all live and act with Pleasure, they are gay, and flourish in their proper Element and allotted Place, they want neither for Food, Cloathing, or Retreat; which would dwindle and die, destroy, or poison one another, if all coveted the same Element, Place, or Food.

Nay, and as the Matter is admirably well ordered, yet considering the World’s increase, there would not be sufficient Room, Food, and other Necessaries for all the living Creatures, without another grand Act of the divine Wisdom and Providence, which is the Balancing the Number of Individuals of each Species of Creatures, in that Place appointed thereto: Of which in the next Chapter.