Chap. V.
1. That the Form and Beauty, Seed and Signature of Plants are Arguments of a Providence. 2. That though the mere motion of the Matter might produce certain Meteors, as Haile, Snow, Ice, &c. yet it will not follow that the same is the adequate cause of Animals and Plants. 3. That it were no great botch nor gap in Nature, if some more rude Phænomena were acknowledged the Results of the mere Mechanical Motion of Matter. 4. That the Forme and Beauty of Flowers and Plants are from an higher Principle. 5. That there is such a thing as Beauty, and that it is the Object of our Intellectual Faculties. 6. From whence it follows, that the beautiful Forms and Figures of Plants and Animals are from an Intellectual Principle.
1. Hitherto we have onely considered the more rude and careless strokes and delineaments of Divine Providence in the world, set out in those more large Phænomena of Day and Night, Winter and Summer, Land and Sea, Rivers, Mountains, Metalls, and the like; we now come to a closer view of God and Nature in Vegetables, Animals, and Man.
And first of Vegetables, where I shall touch only these four heads, their Form and Beauty, their Seed, their Signatures, and their great Use as well for Medicine as Sustenance. And that we may the better understand the advantage we have in this closer Contemplation of the works of Nature, we are in the first place to take notice of the condition of that Substance which we call Matter, how fluid and slippery and undeterminate it is of itself; or if it be hard, how unfit it is to be chang'd into any thing else. And therefore all things rot into a moisture before any thing can be generated of them, as we soften the wax before we set on the Seal.
2. Now therefore, unless we will be so foolish, as, because the uniform motion of the Aire, or some more subtile corporeal Element, may so equally compress or bear against the parts of a little vaporous moisture, as to form it into round drops (as some say it doth in the Dew and other Experiments) and therefore because this more rude and general Motion can doe something, conclude that it does all things; we must in all Reason confess that there is an Eternal Mind, in virtue whereof the Matter is thus usefully formed and changed.
But mere rude and undirected Motion, because naturally it will have some kind of Results, that therefore it will reach to such as plainly imply a wise contrivance of Counsel, is so ridiculous a Sophism, as I have already intimated, that it is more fit to impose upon the inconsiderate Souls of Fools and Children, then upon men of mature Reason and well exercis'd in Philosophy. Admit that Rain and Snow and Wind and Hail and Ice, and such like Meteors, may be the products of Heat and Cold, or of the Motion and Rest of certain small particles of the Matter; yet that the
