THE LIGHT OF NATURE PURSUED. BY ABRAHAM TUCKER, Esq. FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED. TOGETHER WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. BY SIR H. P. ST. JOHN MILDMAY, BART. M. P. VOL. III. CAMBRIDGE: PUBLISHED BY HILLIARD AND BROWN, BOOKSELLERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 1831. THE LIGHT OF NATURE PURSUED. LIGHTS OF NATURE AND GOSPEL BLENDED. CHAP. I. PARTITION OF THE GENERAL RULE. NATURE has given to each species of animals some distinguishing power or quality for their preservation and entertainment. The lion lives by his courage: the elephant by his strength: the swine by his sturdiness. The squirrel delights in his agility: the swallow in the strength and swiftness of his wing. The spider seeks his maintenance from his cunning: the bee from her industry. The nation of flies and little fishes, artless and defenceless, exposed for a prey to all other creatures, subsist by their prolificness, multiplying them in greater numbers than all other creatures can destroy. To man she has given understanding to supply the want of strength, robustness, agility, and sagacity of instinct, wherein he falls short of his brother animals: and to make the qualities he finds in them subservient to his own uses. Therefore our understanding is the faculty it behoves us most sedulously to cultivate, because from that we may principally expect to receive a supply of our uses and enjoyments. Yet we need not too much despise our fellow-creatures for the want of it for we cannot enter into their ideas, nor know for certain whether their lives do not pass as pleasurably as our own. We know our pains are doubled by reflection, and perhaps it does not add much to our pleasures, which are made thereby to satiate the sooner: if we have funds of entertainment unknown to them, we have likewise many sources of disquietude and anx |