others. Such may deliberate, though not so clearly, nor so judiciously as others; but of mere madmen, and mere natural fools, to say that they, who have not the use of reason, do deliberate or use reason, implies a contradiction. But his chiefest confidence is in his bees and spiders, ‘of whose actions,’ he saith, ‘if I had been a spectator, I would have confessed, not only election, but also art, prudence, policy, very near equal to that of mankind, whose life, as Aristotle saith, is civil.’ Truly I have contemplated their actions many times, and have been much taken with their curious works; yet my thoughts did not reflect so much upon them, as upon their Maker, who is _sic magnus in magnis_, that he is not _minor in parvis_; so great in great things, that he is not less in small things. Yes, I have seen those silliest of creatures, and seeing their rare works I have seen enough to confute all the bold-faced atheists of this age, and their hellish blasphemies. I saw them, but I praised the marvellous works of God, and admired that great and first intellect, who hath both adapted their organs, and determined their fancies to these particular works. I was not so simple as to ascribe those rarities to their own invention, which I knew to proceed from a mere instinct of nature. In all other things they are the dullest of creatures. Naturalists write of bees, that their fancy is imperfect, not distinct from their common-sense, spread over their whole body, and only perceiving things present. When Aristotle calls them political or sociable creatures, he did not intend it really that they lived a civil life, but according to an analogy, because they do such things by instinct as truly political creatures do out of judgment. Nor when I read in St. Ambrose of their hexagons or sexangular cells, did I therefore conclude that they were mathematicians. Nor when I read in Crespet, that they invoke God to their aid when they go out of their hives, bending their thighs in form of a cross, and bowing themselves; did I therefore think that this was an act of religious piety, or that they were capable of theological virtues, whom I see in all other things in which their fancies are not determined, to be the silliest of creatures, strangers not only to right reason, but to all resemblances of it.