is, the blind and fortuitous
concourse of causes necessary and void of reason) cannot have formed
this universe. To this purpose it is not amiss to call to mind the
celebrated comparisons of the ancients.

SECT. V. Noble Comparisons proving that Nature shows the Existence
of its Maker. First Comparison, drawn from Homer's "Iliad."

Who will believe that so perfect a poem as Homer's "Iliad" was not
the product of the genius of a great poet, and that the letters of
the alphabet, being confusedly jumbled and mixed, were by chance, as
it were by the cast of a pair of dice, brought together in such an
order as is necessary to describe, in verses full of harmony and
variety, so many great events; to place and connect them so well
together; to paint every object with all its most graceful, most
noble, and most affecting attendants; in short, to make every person
speak according to his character in so natural and so forcible a
manner? Let people argue and subtilise upon the matter as much as
they please, yet they never will persuade a man of sense that the
"Iliad" was the mere result of chance. Cicero said the same in
relation to Ennius's "Annals;" adding that chance could never make
one single verse, much less a whole poem. How then can a man of
sense be induced to believe, with respect to the universe, a work
beyond contradiction more wonderful than the "Iliad," what his
reason will never suffer him to believe in relation to that poem?
Let us attend another comparison, which we owe to St. Gregory
Nazianzenus.

SECT. VI. Second Comparison, drawn from the Sound of Instruments.

If we heard in a room, from behind a curtain, a soft and harmonious
instrument, should we believe that chance, without the help of any
human hand, could have formed such an instrument? Should we say
that the strings of a violin, for instance, had of their own accord
ranged and extended themselves on a wooden frame, whose several
parts had glued themselves together to form a cavity with regular
apertures? Should we maintain that the bow formed without art
should be pushed by the wind to touch every string so variously, and
with such nice justness? What rational man could seriously
entertain a doubt whether a human hand touched such an instrument
with so much harmony? Would he not cry out, "It is a masterly hand
that plays upon it?" Let us proceed to inculcate the same truth.

SECT. VII. Third Comparison, drawn from a Statu