448 or PLANTS AND ANIMALS. young sparrows or chickens? The motions of the plants are slower indeed, but as regular and rational as those of the ani- mals ; they show as much design and contrivance, and are as necessary and proper to attain their end. Besides, if we imagine these little young birds to practise their different forms of motion for their nourishment or defence by any springs of reason or thought, meaning or design in themselves, do we not ascribe understanding to them a little too soon, and confess their know- ledge is much superior to our own, and their reason of more early growth ? Do we not make men, or rather angels, of them, instead of brute creatures ? But if we suppose them to be acted by the peculiar laws of animal motion, which God the Creator by a long foresight bas established amongst his works, we give him the honour of that early and superior reason, and we adore the divine artificer; Psal. cxlv. 10. All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord. But we are lost among these wonders of thy wisdom, we are ignorant of thy divine and inimitable contrivances. What shall we say to thee thou all-wise creating Power ! Thy works surprize us ; the plants and the brutes puzzle and confound our reasonings : We gaze at thy workmanship with sacred amaze- ment, thy ways in the kingdom of nature are untraceable, and thy wonders past finding out. SECT. VII.-Of the Principles of Action in Brutes andMen.. BUT what will some readers say when they peruse these discourses ? Are plants and brutes so very near a-kin to each other, creatures which we have always distinguished into the sen- sible and the senseless? Have birds and beastsno more percep- tion or feeling, knowledge or consciousness, understanding or will than the herbs, the trees and the flowers? Is the grass of the field as wise a thing as the animal which eats it ? Excuse rue here, my friends ; 1 dare assert no such paradoxes. What if some of the early actions of brute creatures are merely the effects of such machinery and instinct as I before described ? It does not follow thence that all the actions and operations of their lives must be ascribed to such a mechanical principle. Even in, human nature, where there is an undoubted principle of sense and reasoning, there are some early actions which seem to be the proper effects of such instinct or mechanism, and are owing to the wondrous divine artifice in the contrivance of their animal bodies, and not to any exercise of their own reasoning powers. Ilow doth the infant hunt after the breast, and take it into its mouth, moving the lips, tongue, and palate in the most proper forms for sucking in the milk to nourish it? How does it readily shut the eyes to cover them from any danger near r IIow does it raise its cries and wailiegs aloud for help
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