amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, whales,
elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess,
are the colossus and majestick pieces of her hand; but
in these narrow engines there is more curious mathe-
maticks; and the civility of these little citizens more
neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker. Who
admires not Regio Montanus his fly beyond his eagle;<17>
or wonders not more at the operation of two souls in
those little bodies than but one in the trunk of a cedar?
I could never content my contemplation with those
general pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea,
the increase of Nile, the conversion of the needle to the
north; and have studied to match and parallel those in
the more obvious and neglected pieces of nature which,
without farther travel, I can do in the cosmography of
myself. We carry with us the wonders we seek without
us: there is all Africa and her prodigies in us. We
are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which
he that studies wisely learns, in a compendium, what
others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.

Sect. 16.--Thus there are two books from whence I
collect my divinity. Besides that written one of God,
another of his servant, nature, that universal and publick
manuscript, that lies expansed unto the eyes of all.
Those that never saw him in the one have discovered
him in the other; this was the scripture and theology
of the heathens; the natural motion of the sun made
them more admire him than its supernatural station did
the children of Israel. The ordinary effects of nature