SECTION I.

Preliminaries.

CHAPTER I.

How potent, sagacious, and provident Nature is in adorning individual things with their own proper powers.

JUST AS that universal and multiform Nature of the World, diffused through all the members of the World, governs this universe of things with a certain order and rules it with immutable constancy, so it cannot be that it is not governed by a certain Divine Architectonic and preservative Law, which prudently administers all things by counsel and right reason, and protects them by its own providence. Which account of the Architectonic mind is nothing other than the immutable Law of Nature; which Plato calls the Art of God; others call it the handmaid, minister, or instrument of the Creator, by which all things are administered, exist, and are preserved; which, as it is coeval with the World, and by the most wise Creator in the ineffable disposition of His Divine providence, [was joined] to it by a certain fatal, so to speak, necessity

The immutable law of nature.