The Living Temple

Is it so admirable a performance, and so ungainsayable an evidence of skill and wisdom, with much labour and long travel of mind, a busy, restless, agitation of working thoughts, the often renewal of frustrated attempts, the varying of defeated trials; this way and that, at length to hit upon, and by much pains, and with a slow gradual progress, by the use of who can tell how many sundry sorts of instruments or tools, managed by more (possibly) than a few hands, by long hewing, hammering, turning, filing, to compose one only single machine of such a frame and structure, as that ⟨p. 81⟩by the frequent re-enforcement of a skilful hand, it may be capable of some (and that, otherwise, but a very short-lived) motion: And is it no argument, or effect of wisdom so easily and certainly, without labour, error, or disappointment to frame both so infinite a variety of kinds, and so innumerable individuals of every such kind of living creatures, that cannot only with the greatest facility move themselves with so many sorts of motion, downwards, upwards (many of them) to, and fro, this way or that, with a progressive, or circular, a swifter or a slower motion at their own pleasure, but can also grow, propagate, see, hear, desire, joy, &c. Is this no work of wisdom, but only blind either, fate or chance? of how strangely perverse and odd a complexion is that understanding (if yet it may be called an understanding) that can make this judgment!

Is it so admirable a performance, and so ungainsayable an evidence of skill and wisdom, with much labour and long travel of mind, a busie, restless, agitation of working thoughts, the often renewal of frustrated attempts, the varying of defeated trials; this way and that, at length to hit upon, and by much pains, and with a slow gradual progress, by the use of who can tell how many sundry sorts of instruments or tools, managed by more (possibly) than a few hands, by long hewing, hammering, turning, filing, to compose one only single machine of such a frame and structure, as that ⟨p. 81⟩by the frequent re-inforcement of a skilful hand, it may be capable of some (and that, otherwise, but a very short-liv'd) motion: And is it no argument, or effect of wisdom so easily and certainly, without labour, error, or disappointment to frame both so infinite a variety of kinds, and so innumerable individuals of every such kind of living creatures, that cannot only with the greatest facility move themselves with so many sorts of motion, downwards, upwards (many of them) to, and fro, this way or that, with a progressive, or circular, a swifter or a slower motion at their own pleasure, but can also grow, propagate, see, hear, desire, joy, &c. Is this no work of wisdom, but only blind either, fate or chance? of how strangely perverse and odd a complexion is that understanding (if yet it may be called an understanding) that can make this judgment!