76
If therefore the most approved of the philosophers did not think meet to pass over or disesteem any significant symbol of the Divinity which they observed even in things that had neither soul nor body, I believe they regarded yet more those properties of government and conduct which they saw in such natures as had sense, and were endued with soul, with passion, and with moral temper. We are not therefore to content ourselves with worshipping these things, but we must worship God through them, — as being the more clear mirrors of him, and produced by Nature, — so as ever worthily to conceive of them as the instruments or artifices of that God which orders all things. And it is reasonable to believe that no inanimate being can be more excellent than an animate one, nor an insensible than a sensible; no, though one should heap together all the gold and emeralds in the universe. For the property of the Divinity consists not in fine colors, shapes, and slicknesses; but, on the contrary, those natures are of a rank below the very dead, that neither did nor ever can partake of life. But now that Nature which hath life and sees, and which hath the source of her motion from her own self, as also the knowledge of things proper and alien to her, hath certainly derived an efflux and a portion of that prudence which (as Heraclitus speaks) considers how the whole universe is governed. Therefore the Deity is no worse represented in these animals, than in the workmanships of copper and stone, which suffer corruptions and decays as well as they, and are besides naturally void of sense and perception. This then is what I esteem the best account that is given of their adoration of animals.
