no first, no cause, no father, no creator, no incomprehensible
wisdom, but that every nature had been alike eternal; and man more
rational than every other nature: why had not the eternal reason of
man provided for his eternal being in the world? For if all were
equal why not equal conditions to all? Why should heavenly bodies live
forever; and the bodies of men rot and die?

Again, who was it that appointed the earth to keep the center, and
gave order that it should hang in the air: that the sun should travel
between the tropics, and never exceed those bounds, nor fail to
perform that progress once in every year: the moon to live by borrowed
light; the fixed stars (according to common opinion) to be fastened
like nails in a cartwheel; and the planets to wander at their
pleasure? Or if none of these had power over other: was it out of
charity and love, that the sun by his perpetual travel within these
two circles, hath visited, given light unto, and relieved all parts
of the earth, and the creatures therein, by turns and times? Out
of doubt, if the sun have of his own accord kept this course in all
eternity, he may justly be called eternal charity and everlasting
love. The same may be said of all the stars; who being all of them
most large and clear fountains of virtue and operation, may also, be
called eternal virtues: the earth may be called eternal patience; the
moon, an eternal borrower and beggar; and man of all other the most
miserable, eternally mortal. And what were this, but to believe again
in the old play of the gods? Yea in more gods by millions, than ever
Hesiodus dreamed of. But instead of this mad folly, we see it well
enough with our feeble and mortal eyes; and the eyes of our reason
discern it better; that the sun, moon, stars, and the earth, are
limited bounded, and constrained: themselves they have not constrained
nor could. "Omne determinatum causam habet aliquam efficientem, quae
illud determinaverit:" "Everything bounded hath some efficient cause,
by which it is bounded."

Now for Nature; as by the ambiguity of this name, the school of
Aristotle hath both commended many errors unto us, and sought also
thereby to obscure the glory of the high moderator of all things,
shining in the creation, and in the governing of the world: so if the
best definition be taken out of the second of Aristotle's "Physics,"
or "primo de Coelo," or out of the fifth of his "Metaphysics"; I
say that the best is but nomin