Psalm 104. 24
IN these Words are two Clauses, in the first whereof the Psalmist admires the Multitude of God’s works, How Manifold are thy Works O Lord? In the second he celebrates his Wisdom in the creation of them; In Wisdom hast thou made them all.
Of the first of these I shall say little, only briefly run over the Works of this visible world, and give some guess at the Number of them. Whence it will appear, that upon this account they well deserve Admiration, the Number of them being uninvestigable by us; and so affording us a demonstrative Proof of the unlimited extent of the Creators Skill, and the foecundity of his Wisdom and Power. That the Number of corporeal Creatures is unmeasurably great, and known only to the Creator himself, may thus probably be collected: First of all, The Number of fixt Stars is on all hands acknowledged to be next to infinite; Secondly, Every fixt Star in the now received Hypothesis is a Sun or Sunlike body, and in like manner encircled with a Chorus of Planets moving about it; Thirdly, Each of these Planets is in all likelihood furnished with as great variety of corporeal Creatures animate and inanimate as the Earth is, and all as different in Nature as they are in Place from the terrestrial, and from each other. Whence it will follow that these must be much more infinite than the Stars; I do not mean absolutely according to the Philosophick exactness infinite, but only infinite or innumerable as to us, or their number prodigiously great.
That the fixt Stars are innumerable may thus be made out: Those visible to the naked Eye are by the least account acknowledged to be above a Thousand, excluding those towards the South Pole which are not visible in our Horizon: Besides these, there have been incomparably more detected and brought to light by the Telescope; the Milky Way being found to be (as was formerly conjectured) nothing but great Companies or Swarms of minute Stars singly invisible, but by reason of their proximity mingling and confounding their Lights and appearing like lucid Clouds. And it’s likely that, had we more perfect Telescopes, many Thousands more might be discovered; and yet after all an incredible Multitude remain, by reason of their immense distance beyond all Ken by the best Telescopes that could possibly be invented or polished by the Wit and Hand of an Angel. For if the World be, as Des Cartes would have it, indefinitely extended; that is, so far as no Human Intellect can fancy any bounds of it, then what we see or can come to see must be the least part of what is undiscoverable by us; the whole Universe extending a Thousand times farther beyond the utmost Stars we can possibly descry, than those be distant from the Earth we live upon. This Hypothesis of the fixt Stars being so many Suns, &c. seems more agreeable to the Divine Greatness and Magnificence: But that which induces me much to doubt of the Magnitude of the Universe and immense Distance of the fixed Stars, is the stupendious Phaenomena of Comets, their sudden accension or appearance in full Magnitude, the length of their Tails and swiftness of their Motion, and gradual diminution of Bulk and Motion, till at last they disappear: Neither do I think the Universe indefinitely extended, as Des Cartes upon a false ground [that the formal ratio of a Body was nothing but Extension into length, breadth and profundity, or having partes extra partes, and that Body and Space were synonimous terms] assert ed: For it may as well be limited this way as in the old Hypothesis; which places the fixt Stars in the same spherical Superficies; according to which (old Hypothesis) they may also be demonstrated by the same mediums to be innumerable, only instead of their distance substituting their Smalness for the reason of their Invisibility.
But leaving the celestial Bodies, I come now to the terrestrial; which are either inanimate or animate. The inanimate are the Elements, Meteors and Fossils of all sorts, at the Number of which last I cannot give any probable guess; Bur if the rule, which some considerate Philosophers deliver, holds good; viz. how much more imperfect any Genus or Order of Beings is, so much more numerous are the Species contained under it; as for Example: Birds being a more perfect kind of Animals than Fishes, there are more of these than of those, and for the like reason more Birds than Quadrupeds, and more Insects than of any of the rest; and so more Plants than Animals: Nature being more sparing in her more excellent Productions. If this Rule I say holds good; then should there be more Species of Fossils or generally of inanimate Bodies than of Vegetables; of which there is some reason to doubt. unless we will admit all sorts of formed Stones to be distinct Species.
Animate Bodies are divided into four great Genera or Orders, Beasts, Birds, Fishes and Insects.
The Species of Beasts, including also Serpents, are not very numerous: Of such as are certainly known and described I dare say not above 150. And yet I believe not many, that are of any considerable bigness, in the known Regions of the World, have escaped the Cognizance of the curious. [I reckon all Dogs to be of one Species they mingling together in generation, and the breed of such Mixtures being prolifick.]
The number of Birds known and described may be near 500; And the number of Fishes, secluding Shelfish as many; but if the Shelfish be taken in, more than double the number. How many of each Genus remain yet undiscovered one cannot certainly nor very nearly conjecture, but we may suppose the whole sum of Beasts and Birds to exceed by a third part, and Fishes by one half, those known.
The Insects, if we take in the Exanguious both Terrestrial and Aquatick, may in derogation to the precedent Rule for number vie even with Plants themselves. For the Exanguious alone, by what that Learned and Critical Naturalist my Honoured Friend Dr. Martin Lister hath already observed and delineated, I conjecture, cannot be fewer than 1800 or 2000 Species, perhaps many more.
The Butterflies and Beetles are such numerous Tribes, that I believe in our own native Country alone the Species of each kind may amount to 150 or more. And if we should make the Caterpillers and Hexapods from whence these come to be distinct Species, as most Naturalists have done, the number will be doubled, and these two Genera will afford us 600 Species. But if those be admitted for distinct Species, I see no reason but their Aureliae also may pretend to a Specifick difference from the Caterpillers and Butterflies; and so we shall have 300 Species more, therefore we exclude both these from the degree of Species, making them to be the same Insect under a different larva or Habit.
The Fly-kind, if under that name we comprehend all other flying Insects, as well such as have four as such as have but two Wings, of Both which kinds there are many subordinate Genera, will be found in multitude of Species to equal if not exceed both the forementioned kinds.
The creeping Insects that never come to be winged, though for number they may fall short of the flying or winged, yet are they also very numerous; as by running over the several kinds I could easily demonstrate: Supposing then, there be a thousand several sorts of Insects in this Island and the Sea near it: if the same Proportion holds between the Insects native of England, and those of the rest of the World, as doth between Plants Domestick and Exotick, (that is, as I guess, near a Decuple) the Species of Insects in the whole Earth (Land and Water) will amount to 10000, and I do believe they rather exceed than fall short of that sum. The number of Plants contained in C. Bauhin’s Pinax is about 6000, which are all that had been described by the Authors that wrote before him, or observed by himself; in which Work, besides mistakes and repetitions incident to the most wary and knowing men in such a Work as that; there are a great many, I might say some Hundreds put down for different Species, which in my Opinion are but accidental Varieties: Which I do not say to detract from the excellent pains and performance of that Learned, Judicious and Laborious Herbarist, or to defraud him of his deserved Honour, but only to shew, that he was too much sway’d by the Opinions then generally current among Herbarists, that different Colour or multiplicity of Leaves in the Flower and the like accidents were sufficient to constitute a Specifick difference. But supposing there had been 6000 then known and described; I cannot think but that there are in the World more then double that number; there being in the vast continent of America as great a variety of Species as with us, and yet but few common to Europe, or perhaps Asrick and Asia, and if, on the other side the Equator, there be much Land still remaining undiscovered as probably there may, we must suppose the number of Plants to be far greater.
What can we infer from all this? If the number of Creatures be so exceeding great, how great nay immense must needs be the Power and Wisdom of him who form’d them all! For (that I may borrow the Words of a Noble and Excellent Author) as it argues and manifests more skill by far in an Artificer to be able to frame both Clocks and Watches, and Pumps, and Mills, and Granadoes and Rockets, then he could display in making but one of those sorts of Engines; so the Almighty discovers more of his Wisdom in forming such a vast multitude of different sorts of Creatures, and all with admirable and irreproveable Art, than if he had created but a few: For this declares the greatness and unbounded Capacity of his Understanding. Again, the same superiority of Knowledg would be displaid by contriving Engines of the same kind or for the same purposes after different fashions, as the moving of Clocks or other Engines by Springs instead of Weights: So the Infinitely Wise Creator hath shewn in many Instances, that he is not confin’d to one only Instrument for the working one Effect, but can perform the same thing by divers means. So though Feathers seem necessary for flying, yet hath he enabled several Creatures to fly without them, as two sorts of Fishes, and the Bat, not to mention the numerous tribes of flying Insects. In like manner though the Air-bladder in Fishes seems necessary for swimming, yet some are so form’d as to swim without it; viz. First, The Cartilagineous kind, which by what artifice they poise themselves, ascend and descend at pleasure, and continue in what depth of Water they list, is as yet unknown to us. Secondly, The Cetaceous kind, or Sea-Beasts differing in nothing almost from Quadrupeds but the want of Feet. The Air which in respiration these receive into their Lungs may serve to render their Bodies equiponderant to the Water; and the constriction or dilatation of it, by the help of the Diaphragm and Muscles of respiration, may probably assist them to ascend or descend in the Water, by a light impulse thereof with their Fins.
Again, though the Water being a cold Element, the most wise God hath so attempered the blood and bodies of Fishes in general, that a small degree of heat is sufficient to preserve their due consistency and motion and to maintain Life; yet to shew that he can preserve a Creature in the Sea, and in the coldest part of the Sea too, that may have as great a degree of heat as Quadrupeds themselves; he hath created great variety of these Cetaceous Fishes, which converse chiefly in the Northern Seas, whose whole Body being encompassed round with a copious Fat or Blubber (which, by reflecting and redoubling the internal heat, and keeping off the external cold, doth the same thing to them that Cloths do to us) is enabled to abide the greatest cold of the Sea-water. The reason why these Fishes delight to frequent chiefly the Northern-Seas is I conceive not only for the quiet which they enjoy there, but because the Northern Air, which they breath being more fully charged with nitrous particles, is fittest to maintain the vital Heat in that Activity as is sufficient to move such an unwieldy bulk, as their Bodies are with due celerity and to bear up against and repell the ambient cold; and may likewise enable them to continue longer under water than a warmer and thinner Air could.
I come now to the second part of the words; In Wisdom hast thou made them all. In discoursing wherof I shall endeavour to make out in particulars what the Psalmist here asserts in general concerning the works of God, that they are all very wisely contrived and adapted to ends both Particular and General.
But before I enter upon this task, I shall, by way of Preface or Introduction, say something concerning those Systems which undertake to give an Account of the formation of the Universe by Mechanical Hypotheses of Matter moved either uncertainly, or according to some Catholick Laws, without the intervention and assistance of any superior immaterial Agent.
There is no greater, at least no more palpable and convincing Argument of the Existence of a Deity than the admirable Art and Wisdom that discovers itself in the make and constitution, the order and disposition, the ends and uses of all the parts and members of this stately fabrick of Heaven and Earth. For if in the works of Art, as for example; a curious Edifice or Machine, counsel, design, and direction to an end appearing in the whole frame and in all the several pieces of it, do necessarily infer the being and operation of some intelligent Architect or Engineer, why shall not also in the Works of Nature, that Grandeur and Magnificence, that excellent contrivance for Beauty, Order, Use, &c. which is observable in them, wherein they do as much transcend the Effects of human Art as infinite Power and Wisdom exceeds finite, infer the existence and efficiency of an Omnipotent and All-wise Creator?
To evade the force of this Argument, and to give some Account of the Original of the World, Atheistical Persons have set up two Hypotheses.
The first is that of Aristotle, that the World was from Eternity, in the same condition that now it is, having run through the Successions of infinite generations; to which they add, Self-existent and unproduced. For Aristotle doth not deny God to be the efficient Cause of the World. But only asserts, that he created it from Eternity making him a necessary Cause thereof; it proceeding from him by way of Emanation, as light from the Sun.
This Hypothesis which hath some shew of reason, for something must necessarily exist of it self; and if something, why may not all things? This Hypothesis, I say, is so clearly and fully confuted by the Reverend and Learned Dr. Tillotson now Dean of S. Pauls London, in his first printed Sermon, and the R. Reverend Father in God John late Lord Bishop of Chester in Book I. Chap. V. of his Treatise of the Principles of Natural Religion, that nothing material can by me be added; to whom therefore I refer the Reader.
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