Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

2. They know not their end. They have a Law in their natures, but have no rational understanding, either of the end to which they are appointed, or the means fit to attain it: They naturally do what they do, and move by no Counsel of their own, but by a Law imprest by some higher hand upon their natures.

What Plant knows why it strikes its root into the earth? Doth it understand what storms it is to contest with, or why it shoots up its branches towards Heaven? Doth it know it needs the droppings of the clouds to preserve it self, and make it fruitful? These are acts of understanding: The root is downward to preserve its own standing, the branches upward to preserve other Creatures: This understanding is not in the Creature it self, but originally in another. Thunders and Tempests know not why they are sent, yet by the direction of a mighty hand they are instruments of Justice upon a wicked world.

^*Rational Creatures that act for some end, and know the end they aim at, yet know not the manner of the natural motion of the members to it. When we intend to look upon a thing, we take no counsel about the natural motion of our eyes, we know not all the principles of their operations; or how that dull matter whereof our bodies are composed, is subject to the order of our minds.^* We are not of Counsel with our stomachs about the concoction of our meat, or the distribution of the nourishing juice to the several parts of the body. Neither the Mother nor the Foetus sit in Council how the formation should be made in the Womb. We know no more than a plant knows what Stature it is of, and what medicinal virtue its fruit hath for the good of man; yet all those natural operations are perfectly directed to their proper end, by an higher wisdom than any human understanding is able to conceive, since they exceed the ability of an inanimate or fleshly nature, yea and the wisdom of a man. Do we not often see reasonable Creatures acting for one end, and perfecting a higher than what they aimed at, or could suspect? When Josephs Brethren sold him for a Slave, their end was to be rid of an Informer: