490 raEEDOM or WILL. cause they are all compounded bodies? Yet in two bodies per- fectly simple, such as two pieces of solid matter without a pore, there may be perfect equality and likeness. And surely if not in fact, yet in the divine idea of possibles there may be many parts of matter perfectly like and equal. If we are allowed to talk of two distinct parts of time, or distinct parts of space in which the world might have been created, it must be confessed that these parts of space or time are perfectly alike, and consequently that the determination of the will of God to create the world in one of these parts of timeor space rather than another, was entirely from his ownwill. If tone would descend to the minute specific particles of which distinct bodies are composed, we should see abundant reason to believe there are thousands of such little par- ticles or atoms of matter, which are perfectly equal and alike, and could give no distinct determination to the will ofGod where .to place them. Is it not acknowledged by philosophers that the different kinds of bodies are made up of corpuscles, of different shapes and different sizes ; but that each particular kind is made of similar corpuscles, and nearly equal also ? Thus for instance, the particles of common water have some essential difference from the particles of oil, blood, quicksilver, animal or vegetable juices, and other liquids ; but they are, in a great measure, if not universally, similar among themselves : Now if we consider the immense quantity of pure water which is in this world, and the innumerable small essential particles that compose it, is there not abundant reason to suppose that millions of these particles are equal and alike, rather than to imagine that God the Creator took special care that among the innumerable millions of these aqueous particles which lie made in all the rivers and oceans in the world, there should not be two of them alike and equal ; and yet that all of them should be so nearly equal, and so much alike, as to distinguish them from the particles of all other bodies ? We might use the same sort of reasoning concerning the particles that compose air, light, sun-beams, concerning earth, sand, stone and chalk, concerning grass, herbs, leaves and trees ; the hair, skin, flesh and hones of animals, and all other specific particles of bodies whether solid or fluid, that compose this lower world :. We might ascend to the sun, the vastest of all the bodies, and consider the infinite myriads of luminous or fiery particles which go to compose it, or which have been issuing from it every moment since its creation, and all these perhaps, are vastly more in number than go to compose all the planets put together, and then enquire whether there are not two of ail these particles exactly alike : This argument would run through the whole universe of the planetaryworlds, with all their con- tents.and inhabitants; and can we suppose that the Creator took
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