admire the hand that acteth in them, the Contrivance and Power of an infinite Workman! For where we have fuch manifeft ftrokes of wife order, counsel, and management, of the obfervance of Mathematical Proporti ons, can we conclude there was any thing less than Reafon, Judgment, and Mathematical Skill in the cafe? or that this could be effected by any other Power, but that of an Intelligent Being, who had Wisdom and Power fufficient for fuch a Work: according to the reafoning of the Stoick in Cicero, who pleads thus (1): If thou shouldft fee a large and fair Houfe, hou couldst not be brought to imagine that House was built by the Mice and Weefles, although thou shouldft not fee the Mafter thereof: fo (faith he) wouldft thou not think thy felf very plainly to play

(1) Cic. de Nat. Deor. L. 2. c. 6.

the

the fool, if thou fhouldft imagine fo orderly a frame of the World, fo great a variety and beauty of Heavenly things, Jo prodigious a quantity and magnitude of Sea and Land, to be thy House, thy Workmanship, and not that of the immortal Gods! And fo when we see fuch good order, fuch due proportions in this Region of the Universe,and have good reafon to conclude the fame may be throughout the whole, can we, without great violence to Reafon, imagine this to be any other than the Work of GOD?

BOOK

That the bare MOTION of the Heavens and Earth are a Demonftration of God.

N treating concerning the Motion of the Hea venly Bodies, it will be neceffary to take in that of the Earth too,

it

it being not easy to speak of one without the other. And here there are two things that are manifeft Demonftrations of the presence and management of GOD, namely, That fuch Bodies fhould move at all: and that their Motion is so regular.

1. THAT all thofe vaft Globes of the Universe should have a Motion, must of neceffity be from fome Being that had Power enough to put them in motion. For as Lactantius well argues, (1) There is indeed a power in the Stars (and the like may be faid of the rest of the Globes) of performing their Motions, but that is the Power of God who made and governs all things, not of the Stars themselves that are moved. For it is impoffible for fuch lifeless, dull, unweildy Bodies to move themselves, but what Motion

(1) Lactant, L. 2. C. 5.

they

they have, they muft receive from fomething else able to move them,

Now this fome will fay may be effected by the Vortices furrounding the Sun, the Earth, or other Primary Mover (2); or from a Vectoral Power, or Emanations of the Sun, (3), or other the like Primary Môvers carrying about and pushing on fuch Bodies as move about 'em. But allowing that it is poffible it might be fo, yet still we must recur to fome First Mover, fome Primary Agent, who was able to fet that principal Mover into Motion: and then the cafe amounts to much the fame, and the Argument hath the fame force, whether we attribute the Motion of one, or all the feveral Globes to the Power of GOD. For in our Solar Sy

(2) This was Cartes his Notion, and of others long before him.

(3) This was Kepler's Scheme.p. 367

fteme,