CHAP. VII.
The Conclusion.
And now ’tis Time to pause a while, and reflect upon the whole. And as from the Confederations in the preceding Book, we have especial Reason to be thankful to our infinitely merciful Maker, for his no less kind than wonderful Contrivances of our Body; so we have Reason from this brief View I have taken of this last Tribe of the Creation, to acknowledge and admire the same Creator’s Work and Contrivances in them. For we have here a large Family of Animals, in every particular Respect, curiously contrived and made, for that especial Posture, Place, Food, and Office or Business which they obtain in the World. So that if we consider their own particular Happiness and Good, or Man’s Use and Service; or if we view them throughout, and consider the Parts wherein they agree with Man, or those especially wherein they differ, we shall find all to be so far from being Things fortuitous, undesigned, or any way accidental, that every Thing is done for the best; all wisely contrived, and incomparably fitted up, and every way worthy of the great Creator. And he that will shut his Eyes, and not see God[a] in these his Works, even of the poor Beasts of the Earth, that will not say (as Elihu hath it, Job xxxv. 10, 11.) Where is God my Maker, who teacheth us more than the Beasts of the Earth, and maketh us wiser than the Fowls of the Heaven? Of such an one we may use the Psalmist’s Expression, Psal. xlxix. 12. That he is like the Beasts[b] that perish.
FOOTNOTES:
[b] Illos qui nullum omnino Deum esse dixerunt, non modò non Philosophos, sed ne homines quidem fuisse dixerim; qui, mutis simillimi, ex solo corpore constiterunt, nihil videntes animo. Lactant. L. 7. c. 9.