SOME THOUGHTS. CONCERNING RELIGION, NATURAL and REVEALED. WITH REFLEXIONS ON The Sources of INCREDULITY With regard to RELIGION. By the Right Honourable DUNCAN FORBES of EDINBURGH: Printed for G. HAMILTON and J. BALFOUR, MDCCL SOME THOUGHTS. CONCERNING RELIGION, &c. Tis impossible to view the immenfity, the variety, the harmony, and the beauty of the universe, without concluding it to be the workmanship of a Being infinitely powerful, wife, and good. It is impoffible to examine the structure of the most inconfiderable plant or animal, without being furprised with such admirable contrivance, as pronounces the author infinitely intelligent, and excludes all fufpicion that it ow'd its origin to blind chance. The vegetable world is adjusted with fuch amazing skill, that each plant, perfect in its own kind, is supported, and propagated, me chanically, by the unerring action of the fun, the air, and the earth where it grows: its feeds, by that mechanism, produce new plants of the same kind; and the herb, that perishes with the season, clothes the fields with the fame livery against the next. That brute matter, inert, and insensible, should be fra A med med so as to perform such wonders, shews wisdom, and power, far beyond the comprehenfion of the most perfect man. The action of the material powers in this system upon the organized body of a plant, preferves, and propagates it: its roots shoot out into the foil where it grows; there it finds abundant aliment for perfecting its trunk, and preparing its feeds; and those feeds are dropped where they meet the like encouragement. But it is not so with animals: the most perfect of the kind, left to the direction of material and mechanical powers only, must perish without rearing any fucceffion. Vegetables and animals are so far fimilar, that both require constant supplies of fresh juices; but in this they differ, that nature mechanically reaches to the one the supply it wants, whereas the other must, by some act of its own, find, and fetch it and therefore, in animals, besides matter and mechanism, there is an active principle; fomewhat, of which we have no conception or knowledge but by its effects, that finds, prepares, and takes in proper nourishment, and determines to the propagation and prefervation of its own species. By what fort of mechanism this principle acts on, or is affected by, the meer matter to which it is join'd, we cannot at all conceive; but this we fee, that it calls all the brute animal creation to those acts that are necessary for self-prefervation, and propa gating the species: each class of animals is highly industrious to compass these ends; and, if we may judge by what we feel tranf acting in the brute part of ourselves, there is in them a strong defire to do those acts that are necessary for the support of themfelves, and a very sensible pleasure attending the gratification of that defire. It does not appear to us that plants are fensible of pleasure or pain; whereas animals, we know, are affected by both. To a plant it is indifferent whether it is supported or not; but to an animal it is not so: it tastes felicity in receiving the necessary fupplies, and languishes under want: the pleafures it receives in feeding, is the motive to look for food, and it is bribed to fupport itself by the happiness it meets with in taking in its nourishment. What the plant does necessarily, the animal does from choice, and is highly rewarded, by the pleasure it receives for every act of its duty in preferving itself, and propagating. Who can give attention to this oeconomy, and at the fame time reflect on the profufe fupply that nature every where affords, for the support of the infinite numbers of animals, of different kinds, that swarm upon this globe, without concluding, that overflowing goodness and benevolence is an attribute of the infinitely wife, and powerful, Author of nature? In looking over the whole animal creation, one fees infinite variety of instincts, and talents, A 2 |