WINTER. _If the latter End of_ October _and Beginning of_ November _be for the most Part warm and rainy, then_ January _and_ February are like to be frosty and cold, _except after a very dry Summer_. IT is very evident, supposing this Observation to be true, as I am pretty confident it is, that the Reason of it is to be sought in that Balance of the Weather which Providence has established. There is not only a Time to sow, and a Time to reap, but there is a Time also for dry and a Time for wet Weather, and if these do not happen at proper Seasons, they will certainly happen at other Seasons; for not only the Wisdom of Philosophers hath discerned, but their Experiments and Observations have put it out of doubt, that there is a certain Rule or Proportion observed between wet Weather and dry in every Country, so that it is nearly the same in every annual Revolution, neither is wet and dry Weather only, but hot and cold, open and frost, that are thus regulated, from whence we see, that when the Scripture represents to us God's settling Things by Weight and Measure, it speaks not only elegantly, but exactly. For we do not mean by Providence any extraordinary or supernatural Interposition of almighty Power, but the constant and settled Order established by the Will of that almighty Being which we commonly call Nature. THERE is nothing easier than for vulgar Understandings to mistake the Meaning of Words, and by a Superstition natural to weak Minds convert, what they imperfectly understand into Notions that perplex and confound them. Hence it proceeds that in common Conversation one hears People speak of Nature as of a Being, or a Kind of subordinate Deity, whereas in Reality the true Meaning of Nature is, that Order or Law which God has established in the Universe, and the Knowledge of Nature is no more than the Light we acquire by Study into the Connexion of those Laws. In this Sense Experience is a Kind of Revelation, that is to say, it is a Sort of Knowledge that comes to us from without, and is infallible in itself, we may indeed go on wrong and deceive ourselves in the Arguments we raise from it, but the Knowledge grounded upon Experiments never varies.