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Intelligent and Benign Agent, that by his excellent Wisdom made the Heavens.

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But before we engage in this Disquisition, we must offer one neceffary Caution; that we need not nor do not confine and determin the purpofes of God in creating all Mundane Bodies, merely to Human Ends and Ufes. Not that we believe it laborious and painfull to Omnipotence to create a World out of Nothing; or more laborious to create a great World, than a small one: fo as we might think it disagreeable to the Majesty and Tranquillity of the Divine Nature to take fo much pains for our fakes. Nor do we count it any abfurdity, that fuch a vaft and immense Universe should be made for the fole use of such mean and unworthy Creatures as the Children of Men. For if we confider the Dignity of an Intelligent Being, and put that in the scales against brute inanimate Matter; we may affirm, without over-valuing Humane Nature, that the Soul of one vertuous and religious Man is of greater worth and excellency than the Sun and his Planets and all the Starrs in the World. If therefore it could appear, that all the Mundane Bodies are fome way conducible to the service of Man; if all were as beneficial to us, as the Polar Starrs were formerly for Navigation: as the Moon is for the flowing and ebbing of Tides, by which an inefti

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mable advantage accrues to the World; for her officious Courtesy on dark Winter nights, especi ally to the more Northern Nations, who in a continual Night it may be of a whole month are fo pretty well accommodated by the Light of the Moon reflected from frozen Snow, that they do not much envy their Antipodes a month's presence of the Sun: if all the Heavenly Bodies were thus serviceable to us, we should not be backward to afsign their usefulness to Mankind, as the fole end of their Creation. But we dare not undertake to fhew, what advantage is brought to Us by those. innumerable Starrs in the Galaxy and other parts of the Firmament, not difcernible by naked eyes, and yet each many thoufand times bigger than the whole body of the Earth: If you lay, they beget in us a great Idea and Veneration of the mighty Author and Governer of fuch ftupendious Bodies, and excite and elevate our minds to his adoration and praise; you fay very truly and well. But would it not raife in us a higher apprehenfion of the infinite Majefty and boundless Beneficence of God, to fuppofe that thofe remote and vaft Bodies were formed, not merely upon Our account to be peept at through an Optick Glafs, but for different ends and nobler purposes And yet who will deny, but that there are great multitudes of lucid Starrs even beyond the reach of the

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beft Telescopes; and that every visible Starr may have opake Planets revolve about them, which we cannot discover? Now if they were not created for Our fakes; it is certain and evident, that they were not made for their own. For Matter hath no life nor perception, is not conscious of is own existence, nor capable of happiness, nor gives the Sacrifice of Praise and Worfhip to the Author of its Being. It remains therefore, that all Bodies were formed for the fake of Intelligent Minds: and as the Earth was principally defigned for the Being and Service and Contemplation of Men; why may not all other Planets be created for the like Ufes, each for their own Inhabitants which have Life and Understanding? If any man will indulge himself in this Speculation, he need not quarrel with revealed Religion upon fuch an account. The Holy Scriptures do not forbid him to fuppofe as great a Multitude of Syftems and as much inhabited, as he pleases. 'Tis true; there is no mention in Mofes's Narrative of the Creation, of any People in other Planets. But it plainly appears, that the Sacred Hiftorian doth only treat of the Origins of Terreftrial Animals: he hath given us no account of God's creating the Angels; and yet the fame Author in the enfuing parts of the Pentateuch makes not unfrequent mention of the Angels of God. Neither need we

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be follicitous about the condition of those Planetary People, nor raise frivolous Difputes, how far they may participate in the miseries of Adam's Fall, or in the benefits of Chrift's Incarnation. As if, because they are supposed to be Rational they must needs be concluded to be Men? For what is Man? not a Reasonable Animal merely, for that is not an adequate and diftinguishing Definition; but a Rational Mind of fuch particular Faculties, united to an Organical Body of fuch a certain Structure and Form, in fuch peculiar Laws of Connexion between the Operations and Affections of the Mind and the Motions of the Body? Now God Almighty by the inexhaufted fecundity of his creative Power may have made innumerable Orders and Claffes of Rational Minds fome higher in natural perfections, others inferior to Human Souls. But a Mind of fuperior or meaner capacities than Human would conftitute a different Species, though united to a Human Body in the fame Laws of Connexion: and a Mind of Human Capacities would make another Species, if united to a different Body in different Laws of Connexion: For this Sympathetical Uni-.. on of a Rational Soul with Matter, fo as to produce a Vital communication between them, is an arbitrary institution of the Divine Wisdom : there is no reason nor foundation in the feparate natures,

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of either substance, why any Motion in the Body fhould produce any Senfation at all in the Soul; or why This motion fhould produce That particular Sensation, rather than any other. God therefore may have join'd Immaterial Souls, even of the fame Class and Capacities in their separate State, to other kinds of Bodies and in other Laws of Union; and from those different Laws of Union there will arise quite different affections and natures and species of the compound Beings. So that we ought not upon any account to conclude, that if there be Rational Inhabitants in the Moon or Mars or any unknown Planets of other Systems, they must therefore have Human Nature, or be involved in the Circumftances of Our World. And thus much was necessary to be here inculcated (which will obviate and preclude the most confiderable objections of our Adversaries) that we do not determin the Final Causes and Usefulness of the Syftematical parts of the World, merely as they have respect to the Exigencies or Conveniencies of Human Life.

Let us now turn our thoughts and imaginations to the Frame of our Syftem, if there we may trace any visible footsteps of Divine Wisdom and Beneficence. But we are all liable to many mistakes by the prejudices of Childhood and Youth, which few of us ever correct by a serious seru

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