providence of God. To raise so beauteous a structure
as the world and the creatures thereof was but his art;
but their sundry and divided operations, with their pre-
destinated ends, are from the treasure of his wisdom.
In the causes, nature, and affections, of the eclipses of
the sun and moon, there is most excellent speculation;
but, to profound further, and to contemplate a reason
why his providence hath so disposed and ordered their
motions in that vast circle, as to conjoin and obscure
each other, is a sweeter piece of reason, and a diviner
point of philosophy. Therefore, sometimes, and in some
things, there appears to me as much divinity in Galen
his books, De Usu Partium,<16> as in Suarez's Meta-
physicks. Had Aristotle been as curious in the enquiry
of this cause as he was of the other, he had not left
behind him an imperfect piece of philosophy, but an
absolute tract of divinity.

Sect. 15.--Natura nihil agit frustra, is the only indis-
putable axiom in philosophy. There are no grotesques
in nature; not any thing framed to fill up empty cantons,
and unnecessary spaces. In the most imperfect creatures,
and such as were not preserved in the ark, but, having
their seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are
everywhere, where the power of the sun is,--in these is
the wisdom of his hand discovered. Out of this rank
Solomon chose the object of his admiration; indeed,
what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees,
ants, and spiders? What wise hand teacheth them to
do what reason cannot teach us? Ruder heads stand